Within the first few moments of Esperando el Tsunami, it is obvious that through their collaborative effort, Argentinian band Lulacruza and French cinematographer Vincent Moon have tapped into something special. Shortly after the title sequences have passed, visuals of sun-pierced white clouds, shot full-on from below, combine with the sound of high-pitched flutes and bells. From here, we're brought to an intimate, treehouse setting where Alejandra Ortiz and Luis Maurette of Lulacruza are making music along with others, trance-like amongst the wind and the trees. The rest of the visual album unfolds like a long statement, unfurling and deepening as the musicians travel from jungle to beach to mountain to ruined building, engaging with nature and a multitude of musicians and musical stylings along the way.

Filmed across Colombia between March and May of 2011, in conjunction with a documentary of the same title, Esperando el Tsunami is an audio-visual album that evolved as it was taking shape. Combining Moon's slow and immersive filming style with Lulacruza's unique combination of earthy ritual music and electronic instrumentation, the collaborators' original intent was to film something similar to the singer-songwriter featurettes and La Blogothèque "takeaway shows" that Moon is well known for.

"We would introduce [Vincent Moon] to a bunch of musicians that we knew," explains Maurette, "but it was going to take a year before he could even make it to Colombia, so in that time, the idea grew."

The possibilities that stood before Lulacruza were too great not to take advantage of.

Lulacruza - "Pensar Bonito" Visual Album Music Video

"We asked ourselves, 'What would we want to do?' We had the opportunity to work with somebody who was a really great cinematographer, and we could travel through Colombia," Maurette continues. "It just felt like we wanted to dig deeper. So we started asking these questions of where music comes from, and [whether] we could find a way to tap into the ancestral voices that influence the atmosphere of each place, and how that then turns into culture--these questions were what brought us to the project."

The first step was for Ortiz and Maurette to call upon connections Lulacruza had already forged with Colombian musicians through previous travels.

"We talked to five different people who have been studying and playing Colombian ancestral music for many years," says Ortiz, "and we asked them to take us to their teachers." With the help of those teachers -- or musical guides -- Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon made their way throughout the country and interacted directly with the diverse cultures they came in contact with.

Performing a combination of tracks from Lulacruza's most recent studio album, Orcas, as well as earlier songs and unreleased work, the musicians that appear in Esperando el Tsunami alongside Ortiz and Maurette represent a range of locations and experiences. The relationships these musical guides had with the types of music Lulacruza were exploring and the places they were traveling were integral to the visual album's success.

"[Some] were... musicians that have recorded albums, but others are just playing old types of music in their homes and for their communities," explains Ortiz.

"We contacted these musicians... in order to try to go to different regions, different parts of Colombia," Maurette says. "They were the ones that more specifically told us, 'Let's go to this little town; let's go to this bay; let's go to this mountain.'"

In the span of only nine tracks, the breadth of locales featured in Esperando el Tsunami is breathtaking, ranging from barren beaches and lush jungles to bustling cities and haunting ruins. The guides determined where exactly Lulacruza needed to go, "because they were experts in those regions and those music."

"It is known that in Colombia there are different regions--ecosystem regions," Maurette explains. These ecosystems include the Amazon jungle, the Andes Mountains, the Pacific Coast, the Caribbean Coast, and the Plains. "Each one... is very distinct in its nature, but also very distinct in its culture and its music.

Related Article

Tapping Into Native Lands // Conexión con las Tierras Indígenas

By traveling among Colombia's diverse regions, Lulacruza attempted to explore and capture the essences of each.

"We went to the Pacific Coast," Ortiz says, giving an example, "where it is rainforest and [there are] a lot of indigenous and Afro descendants, and they play marimba and also some indigenous flutes... We also went to the Sierra Nevada, the Santa Maria, a very sacred mountain on the Caribbean Coast, where indigenous people live, [and] we went to some islands on the Caribbean, two smalls towns around where kumbia was born."

In order to tap into the essences of these places, the collaborators needed to truly engage with each other and be present in the natural environments that surrounded them. The visual and sonic examples of their hands-on interactions are evident throughout Esperando el Tsunami, in which nature is not only a backdrop but also a part of the music. During "Pensar Bonito," in Parque Tayrona, Magdalena, we see Maurette play water in a cave like a drum, while in "El Agua Abarca," the sound of the ocean in Ladrilleros, Valle del Cauca melds with Lulacruza's melodies. Between "Lagunita" and "Vuelvo a la Orilla", we witness Ortiz's stringed instrument, a cuatro, being played by the wind atop a mountain. These improvisations were spur-of-the moment, and according to Ortiz, Moon's ability to capture it all in the way that he did was "magical."

"I'm used to doing what I do," she says, "I'm sort of... in a trance state, and I receive melodies, and I'm making this whole thing, but he could capture that."

Moon's role, at times, felt more like that of a "dancer" than a "film guy," Maurette adds. Because Moon remained so close to the musicians during the filming and because he moved wholly with the music, he was able to truly become part of the experience.

"He's not outside; he's really inside... he's in it," Ortiz explains. "He's part of the flow that's moving through [us]."

Lulacruza - "Vuelvo a la Orilla" Visual Album Music Video

Forging Human Connections // Creando Vínculos Humanos

In addition to connecting with one another, it was important for Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon to forge bonds with the other musicians and cultures they collaborated with along the way. In "Lagunita," we see Ortiz and Maurette play a ritualistic song before an intimate crowd of people in Cabo de la Vela, Guajira; in "Vuelvo a la Orilla," we get a glimpse into the hustling, bustling city of Guapi, Cauca; and in "Montañita," Ortiz and Maurette playfully and percussively engage with musicians in a small room crowded with instruments and objects reminiscent of folklore in Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca.

According to Ortiz, their initial musical guides helped connect them to additional collaborators. "[The collaborators] were open because we went to people who were already in a relationship with our guides, so they were like family to them, or close," she explains.

Often, interacting with these musicians and spiritual figures required Lulacruza and Moon to be truly open themselves.

"They don't really ask for explanations, but they do an energy scan," Ortiz explains, describing the steps they took to travel to the Sierra Nevada region. "So you put your intention about why you are here, and you take this cotton ball that comes from their land, and you sort of meditate with it and put your intentions there. And the spiritual elder takes it and puts it in his hand, and he checks to see if it's aligned with their own purpose, and with what the spirits want."

"It was beautiful to enter into their logic," Ortiz adds.

In every region they traveled to, Lulacruza and Moon found themselves having to adapt to the "rules" of each place, and sometimes, those rules clashed with the pace at which they were used to working.

"To go up to the Sierra Nevada," Maurette gives as an example, "we had to spend four, five days in conversations... for them to give us permission to go..."

"You go, you have to take coffee, and there's food, and then you eat," Ortiz continues, "and then you're sharing...and then maybe they bring out their instruments. Maybe."

Although it was crucial to their process, adapting to the pace of the cultures they interacted with, and overcoming the feeling of being outsiders, proved to be challenging for Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon, who were working intimately together for the first time.

"We didn't know Vincent so much. He didn't know us; he didn't speak Spanish --" Maurette explains, "-- so lots of times we were kind of the translators."

At times, the idiosyncrasies of the people they interacted with created tension when members of the project became lost or frustrated at how slow events were transpiring.

"You can't rush it; you have to earn their trust," Maurette determines. Going with only your goal in mind and thinking you know what you want does not bring about results. According to Ortiz, "See[ing] what's being offered, and being receptive enough to get it" is key.

Lulacruza - "Lagunita" Visual Album Music Video

"There is a clear voice from the earth, and from the water, and it can be found in the rivers and the birds. Music is very connected to the natural world." // "Existe una voz muy clara proveniente de la tierra, y del agua, y puede ser encontrada en los ríos y en los pájaros. La música esta bien conectada al mundo natural." - Alejandra Ortiz, Lulacruza

The Nature Is Universal // La Naturaleza es Universal

Throughout this challenging and evolving process, Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon discovered that even within the distinct cultures and musics they were exploring, there were origins and similarities they could decipher that ran even deeper. Ortiz describes traveling close to Bogota in the Andes Mountains, to a desert peninsula where a very "strong" group of indigenous people live, saying, "They play these flutes...into the wind, while they take care of the goats. People cannot believe that it's in Colombia. [The sound] is different from the rest of the country, from everything around... It's the sound of the land."

Maurette also observed that within the distinct musics, there were similarities he could notice among Coastal and desert musics he'd encountered before -- similarities that were derived not simply from people being descendants of the same ancestors.

"There's something else [contributing to the music], that almost lives there, and when you're there, you kind of tap into that," Maurette explains.

These realizations contributed to the growing philosophy behind the project that took shape as the project itself evolved. In setting out to explore the ancestral voices that tie people to places and contribute to culture, and by "listening deeply to the land," Lulacruza discovered that "all the music is already there; nature is music," according to Ortiz.

"There is a clear voice from the earth, and from the water, and it can be found in the rivers and the birds," she continues. "Music is very connected to the natural world."

Even though Lulacruza were recording and performing their own songs along the way, what became most important for them was to capture the pre-existing music that flowed through them from the land, the more deeply they listened to and interacted with it.

"I think what ended up happening with the film is not so much about us as it is about listening through us," Maurette explains. "Seeing the landscape through our ears."

By engaging with each other, the people, and the land, Lulacruza and Vincent Moon were able to capture not just a series of performances but also the spiritual journey that took place when these deep connections between nature and culture were tapped into.

"We were always reacting and co-creating with the places that we were in and the people that we were meeting," Maurette says.

It is fitting that Esperando el Tsunami's message of "interconnectivity" emerged through a process that was largely improvised and more spiritual than it was performative.

"Our goal was to keep a 'deep listening' attitude, so that included anything we met and anyone we collaborated with," Maurette describes. "It was always kind of a state of improvisation -- the entire trip."

The result is a stand-alone visual album that succeeds not only sonically and visually, but also as a documentation of this spiritual journey, which for all was a moving one.

"I remember at one point I told Vincent --" Ortiz recalls of their experience getting to the Sierra Nevada, "--'They don't care that you are a famous filmmaker. They don't have TV; they don't have Internet. They care about you being a good person or not, and [whether you're] carrying a good message.' So it was a humbling experience, in a way, for everyone in the project."

As a unique project, creating Esperando el Tsunami presented its own unique set of challenges. From the beginning, Lulacruza intended for the visual album to stand alone in terms of its sound.

"The concept was for it not to sound like a visual album, but to actually sound like an album," Maurette describes, "so we did a lot of post-production work."

The sounds we hear on the visual album -- both instrumental and from nature -- are a combination of sounds recorded on site with parts that were cleaned up and mixed or added in later. Lulacruza adapted from Moon's usual recording set-up with the help of their friend Andres Velasquez, a sound engineer who traveled with them during the making of the visual album.

"Vincent had a set-up that was more based towards singer-songwriters, you know -- something that's much more guitar and vocals, or violin and voice," Maurette explains.

Intending to record with many drums and other instruments that would be difficult to capture with a minimal setup, Lulacruza compensated by employing a variety of microphones, hidden throughout the scenes, in order to encompass different types of sound. This set-up undoubtedly contributed to the richness of the visual album's final sound quality, but it made post-production difficult.

"Sometimes we would just use one microphone out of everything recorded, and sometimes we would just use the ambiance, or a combination," Maurette describes.

Bringing the recordings to more of an "album sound" required adding some overdubs and synthesizers and enhancing and equalizing certain sounds and vocal tracks.

"It was a long process" that wasn't easy, Maurette says, "because you always have little problems -- little pops of the microphones, or here's a car passing by that you can hear... There's always things you kind of have to juggle."

Within the first few moments of Esperando el Tsunami, it is obvious that through their collaborative effort, Argentinian band Lulacruza and French cinematographer Vincent Moon have tapped into something special. Shortly after the title sequences have passed, visuals of sun-pierced white clouds, shot full-on from below, combine with the sound of high-pitched flutes and bells. From here, we're brought to an intimate, treehouse setting where Alejandra Ortiz and Luis Maurette of Lulacruza are making music along with others, trance-like amongst the wind and the trees. The rest of the visual album unfolds like a long statement, unfurling and deepening as the musicians travel from jungle to beach to mountain to ruined building, engaging with nature and a multitude of musicians and musical stylings along the way.

Filmed across Colombia between March and May of 2011, in conjunction with a documentary of the same title, Esperando el Tsunami is an audio-visual album that evolved as it was taking shape. Combining Moon's slow and immersive filming style with Lulacruza's unique combination of earthy ritual music and electronic instrumentation, the collaborators' original intent was to film something similar to the singer-songwriter featurettes and La Blogothèque "takeaway shows" that Moon is well known for.
"We would introduce [Vincent Moon] to a bunch of musicians that we knew," explains Maurette, "but it was going to take a year before he could even make it to Colombia, so in that time, the idea grew."
The possibilities that stood before Lulacruza were too great not to take advantage of.

Lulacruza - "Pensar Bonito" Visual Album Music Video

"We asked ourselves, 'What would we want to do?' We had the opportunity to work with somebody who was a really great cinematographer, and we could travel through Colombia," Maurette continues. "It just felt like we wanted to dig deeper. So we started asking these questions of where music comes from, and [whether] we could find a way to tap into the ancestral voices that influence the atmosphere of each place, and how that then turns into culture--these questions were what brought us to the project."
The first step was for Ortiz and Maurette to call upon connections Lulacruza had already forged with Colombian musicians through previous travels.
"We talked to five different people who have been studying and playing Colombian ancestral music for many years," says Ortiz, "and we asked them to take us to their teachers." With the help of those teachers -- or musical guides -- Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon made their way throughout the country and interacted directly with the diverse cultures they came in contact with.
Performing a combination of tracks from Lulacruza's most recent studio album, Orcas, as well as earlier songs and unreleased work, the musicians that appear in Esperando el Tsunami alongside Ortiz and Maurette represent a range of locations and experiences. The relationships these musical guides had with the types of music Lulacruza were exploring and the places they were traveling were integral to the visual album's success.
"[Some] were... musicians that have recorded albums, but others are just playing old types of music in their homes and for their communities," explains Ortiz.
"We contacted these musicians... in order to try to go to different regions, different parts of Colombia," Maurette says. "They were the ones that more specifically told us, 'Let's go to this little town; let's go to this bay; let's go to this mountain.'"
In the span of only nine tracks, the breadth of locales featured in Esperando el Tsunami is breathtaking, ranging from barren beaches and lush jungles to bustling cities and haunting ruins. The guides determined where exactly Lulacruza needed to go, "because they were experts in those regions and those music."
"It is known that in Colombia there are different regions--ecosystem regions," Maurette explains. These ecosystems include the Amazon jungle, the Andes Mountains, the Pacific Coast, the Caribbean Coast, and the Plains. "Each one... is very distinct in its nature, but also very distinct in its culture and its music.

Related Article

Tapping Into Native Lands // Conexión con las Tierras Indígenas

By traveling among Colombia's diverse regions, Lulacruza attempted to explore and capture the essences of each.
"We went to the Pacific Coast," Ortiz says, giving an example, "where it is rainforest and [there are] a lot of indigenous and Afro descendants, and they play marimba and also some indigenous flutes... We also went to the Sierra Nevada, the Santa Maria, a very sacred mountain on the Caribbean Coast, where indigenous people live, [and] we went to some islands on the Caribbean, two smalls towns around where kumbia was born."
In order to tap into the essences of these places, the collaborators needed to truly engage with each other and be present in the natural environments that surrounded them. The visual and sonic examples of their hands-on interactions are evident throughout Esperando el Tsunami, in which nature is not only a backdrop but also a part of the music. During "Pensar Bonito," in Parque Tayrona, Magdalena, we see Maurette play water in a cave like a drum, while in "El Agua Abarca," the sound of the ocean in Ladrilleros, Valle del Cauca melds with Lulacruza's melodies. Between "Lagunita" and "Vuelvo a la Orilla", we witness Ortiz's stringed instrument, a cuatro, being played by the wind atop a mountain. These improvisations were spur-of-the moment, and according to Ortiz, Moon's ability to capture it all in the way that he did was "magical."
"I'm used to doing what I do," she says, "I'm sort of... in a trance state, and I receive melodies, and I'm making this whole thing, but he could capture that."
Moon's role, at times, felt more like that of a "dancer" than a "film guy," Maurette adds. Because Moon remained so close to the musicians during the filming and because he moved wholly with the music, he was able to truly become part of the experience.
"He's not outside; he's really inside... he's in it," Ortiz explains. "He's part of the flow that's moving through [us]."

Lulacruza - "Vuelvo a la Orilla" Visual Album Music Video

Forging Human Connections // Creando Vínculos Humanos

In addition to connecting with one another, it was important for Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon to forge bonds with the other musicians and cultures they collaborated with along the way. In "Lagunita," we see Ortiz and Maurette play a ritualistic song before an intimate crowd of people in Cabo de la Vela, Guajira; in "Vuelvo a la Orilla," we get a glimpse into the hustling, bustling city of Guapi, Cauca; and in "Montañita," Ortiz and Maurette playfully and percussively engage with musicians in a small room crowded with instruments and objects reminiscent of folklore in Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca.
According to Ortiz, their initial musical guides helped connect them to additional collaborators. "[The collaborators] were open because we went to people who were already in a relationship with our guides, so they were like family to them, or close," she explains.
Often, interacting with these musicians and spiritual figures required Lulacruza and Moon to be truly open themselves.
"They don't really ask for explanations, but they do an energy scan," Ortiz explains, describing the steps they took to travel to the Sierra Nevada region. "So you put your intention about why you are here, and you take this cotton ball that comes from their land, and you sort of meditate with it and put your intentions there. And the spiritual elder takes it and puts it in his hand, and he checks to see if it's aligned with their own purpose, and with what the spirits want."
"It was beautiful to enter into their logic," Ortiz adds.
In every region they traveled to, Lulacruza and Moon found themselves having to adapt to the "rules" of each place, and sometimes, those rules clashed with the pace at which they were used to working.
"To go up to the Sierra Nevada," Maurette gives as an example, "we had to spend four, five days in conversations... for them to give us permission to go..."
"You go, you have to take coffee, and there's food, and then you eat," Ortiz continues, "and then you're sharing...and then maybe they bring out their instruments. Maybe."
Although it was crucial to their process, adapting to the pace of the cultures they interacted with, and overcoming the feeling of being outsiders, proved to be challenging for Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon, who were working intimately together for the first time.
"We didn't know Vincent so much. He didn't know us; he didn't speak Spanish --" Maurette explains, "-- so lots of times we were kind of the translators."
At times, the idiosyncrasies of the people they interacted with created tension when members of the project became lost or frustrated at how slow events were transpiring.
"You can't rush it; you have to earn their trust," Maurette determines. Going with only your goal in mind and thinking you know what you want does not bring about results. According to Ortiz, "See[ing] what's being offered, and being receptive enough to get it" is key.

Lulacruza - "Lagunita" Visual Album Music Video

"There is a clear voice from the earth, and from the water, and it can be found in the rivers and the birds. Music is very connected to the natural world." // "Existe una voz muy clara proveniente de la tierra, y del agua, y puede ser encontrada en los ríos y en los pájaros. La música esta bien conectada al mundo natural." - Alejandra Ortiz, Lulacruza

The Nature Is Universal // La Naturaleza es Universal

Throughout this challenging and evolving process, Ortiz, Maurette, and Moon discovered that even within the distinct cultures and musics they were exploring, there were origins and similarities they could decipher that ran even deeper. Ortiz describes traveling close to Bogota in the Andes Mountains, to a desert peninsula where a very "strong" group of indigenous people live, saying, "They play these flutes...into the wind, while they take care of the goats. People cannot believe that it's in Colombia. [The sound] is different from the rest of the country, from everything around... It's the sound of the land."
Maurette also observed that within the distinct musics, there were similarities he could notice among Coastal and desert musics he'd encountered before -- similarities that were derived not simply from people being descendants of the same ancestors.
"There's something else [contributing to the music], that almost lives there, and when you're there, you kind of tap into that," Maurette explains.
These realizations contributed to the growing philosophy behind the project that took shape as the project itself evolved. In setting out to explore the ancestral voices that tie people to places and contribute to culture, and by "listening deeply to the land," Lulacruza discovered that "all the music is already there; nature is music," according to Ortiz.
"There is a clear voice from the earth, and from the water, and it can be found in the rivers and the birds," she continues. "Music is very connected to the natural world."
Even though Lulacruza were recording and performing their own songs along the way, what became most important for them was to capture the pre-existing music that flowed through them from the land, the more deeply they listened to and interacted with it.
"I think what ended up happening with the film is not so much about us as it is about listening through us," Maurette explains. "Seeing the landscape through our ears."
By engaging with each other, the people, and the land, Lulacruza and Vincent Moon were able to capture not just a series of performances but also the spiritual journey that took place when these deep connections between nature and culture were tapped into.
"We were always reacting and co-creating with the places that we were in and the people that we were meeting," Maurette says.
It is fitting that Esperando el Tsunami's message of "interconnectivity" emerged through a process that was largely improvised and more spiritual than it was performative.
"Our goal was to keep a 'deep listening' attitude, so that included anything we met and anyone we collaborated with," Maurette describes. "It was always kind of a state of improvisation -- the entire trip."
The result is a stand-alone visual album that succeeds not only sonically and visually, but also as a documentation of this spiritual journey, which for all was a moving one.
"I remember at one point I told Vincent --" Ortiz recalls of their experience getting to the Sierra Nevada, "--'They don't care that you are a famous filmmaker. They don't have TV; they don't have Internet. They care about you being a good person or not, and [whether you're] carrying a good message.' So it was a humbling experience, in a way, for everyone in the project."

As a unique project, creating Esperando el Tsunami presented its own unique set of challenges. From the beginning, Lulacruza intended for the visual album to stand alone in terms of its sound.
"The concept was for it not to sound like a visual album, but to actually sound like an album," Maurette describes, "so we did a lot of post-production work."
The sounds we hear on the visual album -- both instrumental and from nature -- are a combination of sounds recorded on site with parts that were cleaned up and mixed or added in later. Lulacruza adapted from Moon's usual recording set-up with the help of their friend Andres Velasquez, a sound engineer who traveled with them during the making of the visual album.
"Vincent had a set-up that was more based towards singer-songwriters, you know -- something that's much more guitar and vocals, or violin and voice," Maurette explains.
Intending to record with many drums and other instruments that would be difficult to capture with a minimal setup, Lulacruza compensated by employing a variety of microphones, hidden throughout the scenes, in order to encompass different types of sound. This set-up undoubtedly contributed to the richness of the visual album's final sound quality, but it made post-production difficult.
"Sometimes we would just use one microphone out of everything recorded, and sometimes we would just use the ambiance, or a combination," Maurette describes.
Bringing the recordings to more of an "album sound" required adding some overdubs and synthesizers and enhancing and equalizing certain sounds and vocal tracks.
"It was a long process" that wasn't easy, Maurette says, "because you always have little problems -- little pops of the microphones, or here's a car passing by that you can hear... There's always things you kind of have to juggle."

Expressing a political or sociological idea through music, without coming off as heavy-handed and uninventive, can often be difficult. On BRAIDS' latest music video for "Miniskirt", ideas of sexuality and gender are challenged in a symbolically-rich way, brought to life by Canadian director Kevan Funk. Vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston comments on her primary role in the video, the track's references to fashion and femininity, and bodily expression through movement, amongst other things.

BRAIDS - "Miniskirt" Music Video

How did this collaboration first come to fruition, and how much back-and-forth was there throughout the creative process?

Kevan was our saving our grace. We had gone back and forth with a number of directors who got on board and then rather quickly got off. We found that visually the subject matter discussed in "Miniskirt" is really difficult to portray without hitting people over the head with 'a message' or a series of cliché'd examples. Kevan and I went back and forth for weeks about how to portray the liberation and the cultural equality struggle that females face. Kevan from the beginning was really interested in displaying the control of feminine through our control over nature.

Can you tell me about the decision to work with/as a male director on a feminist track? What kind of unique perspective do you think that may have brought?

Kevan just had the best ideas. And he is a soft and compassionate man. I was a little nervous at first. I thought "I have to work with a woman; only a woman would understand." But I was extremely clear with what I wanted, and made sure Kevan understood me. I had a very prominent role in the decisions made for this video, so I was the 'female' element of the video. It was good to work with a man, because this song isn't just for women, it's for men as well. One of my favourite things as of late is when I see men in the audience singing all the lyrics to "Miniskirt". My heart explodes !

Kevan Funk was quoted as saying, "I began very interested in the idea of commodification and control of femininity in a patriarchal societal construct, and liberation from that restraint." Can you tell me a little bit about the visual cues, media content, or news stories that influenced and inspired these themes?

One really important element of this video was that my experience was to in no way be softened, so that it looked more pleasant on screen or whatever. We wanted really raw emotion. Often times we want beautiful shots of women who hurt; we want the female to still be beautiful when she is experiencing pain or intense feeling. We really wanted to break that down on screen, so if it was a bit awkward, or overwhelming, we just went with it. We were very thoughtful with my positioning onscreen, I wanted nothing to do with belittlement, or anything that would suggest that.
Though the song deals with intense subject matter, we didn't want the video to feel dark. It's a moment of liberation. So we chose a lot of bright locations, a lot of bright colours, especially in the styling.

We found the human exploitation of nature to display the 'commodification and control of femininity'. Symbolically, the female has been related to a 'flower'. We wanted to show the processing and packaging of flowers to display what the female goes through culturally, how she is expected to be.

Fashion is obviously referenced through the title and there are a few fashionable points in the video which stood out to me – such as the red lipstick and the super glam high-fashion imagery towards the beginning. What guided the wardrobe choices?

Fashion plays a huge role in the song. The idea that when a woman decides to dress in a sexy way, she is 'asking for it' [or] that her choice of wear permits certain male behaviour, is just ridiculous to me. Also, culturally, there is the expectation that when a woman wears certain items of clothing, she is expected to act a certain way. I wanted to wear clothing that made me feel sexy, without the demands of needing to act that way. I could scream and shout in a miniskirt, or in a beautiful flower dress, challenging the roles that those items often instill in women to play out.

Flowers play a huge role as a symbolic prop. How and why the greenhouse / flower farm setting chosen, and how easy or difficult was it to shoot in?

The greenhouse displays the control that humans have over the natural, in this case the flower. We wanted it to symbolize the cultural and societal expectations and controls that are placed on women.

It was quite an easy location to shoot in, but it wasn't easy to get access to. Kevan worked really hard to convince the owners to let us shoot there. We said it was an piece on the poetry behind flowers and that we were doing it for our final project for art school. We had to twist the truth a bit !

How did the decision come about to incorporate dance and movement into the second part of this piece?

In the first half of the video, we wanted to show the female as objectified -- the rigidity that is often felt from expectation. So I don't really move that much. I tried to be more like an object in most of the shots. There is the 'walking flower shot' -- the narrator in the video, and in all the other ones, I am just still, posed. We wanted the second half to explore movement and a feeling of freedom, as a strong contrast to the first half. I danced for many years of my life, and it just felt right really great to return to that openness in movement.

There is one scene with a number of male onlookers in the background. It is a departure from the rest of the shots, and for that reason, stands out despite it subtle incorporation of other people. Can you talk about these scenes?

This just happened completely off-chance. We were shooting in the forest, and all of a sudden all these men appeared and started jumping off from a cliff behind me. They were watching me move for awhile, I kind of felt like I was on display, so we broke the silence and asked if we could film them jumping, and made them a part of the experience. We just stumbled upon this display of masculinity. We wanted to portray it, and like the rest of the video, it just came to us by chance. A lot of the shots in this video weren't planned, we had a lot of concepts we wanted to portray and we found that through being open the moments would often present themselves.

Expressing a political or sociological idea through music, without coming off as heavy-handed and uninventive, can often be difficult. On BRAIDS' latest music video for "Miniskirt", ideas of sexuality and gender are challenged in a symbolically-rich way, brought to life by Canadian director Kevan Funk. Vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston comments on her primary role in the video, the track's references to fashion and femininity, and bodily expression through movement, amongst other things.

BRAIDS - "Miniskirt" Music Video

How did this collaboration first come to fruition, and how much back-and-forth was there throughout the creative process?
Kevan was our saving our grace. We had gone back and forth with a number of directors who got on board and then rather quickly got off. We found that visually the subject matter discussed in "Miniskirt" is really difficult to portray without hitting people over the head with 'a message' or a series of cliché'd examples. Kevan and I went back and forth for weeks about how to portray the liberation and the cultural equality struggle that females face. Kevan from the beginning was really interested in displaying the control of feminine through our control over nature.

Can you tell me about the decision to work with/as a male director on a feminist track? What kind of unique perspective do you think that may have brought?
Kevan just had the best ideas. And he is a soft and compassionate man. I was a little nervous at first. I thought "I have to work with a woman; only a woman would understand." But I was extremely clear with what I wanted, and made sure Kevan understood me. I had a very prominent role in the decisions made for this video, so I was the 'female' element of the video. It was good to work with a man, because this song isn't just for women, it's for men as well. One of my favourite things as of late is when I see men in the audience singing all the lyrics to "Miniskirt". My heart explodes !

Kevan Funk was quoted as saying, "I began very interested in the idea of commodification and control of femininity in a patriarchal societal construct, and liberation from that restraint." Can you tell me a little bit about the visual cues, media content, or news stories that influenced and inspired these themes?
One really important element of this video was that my experience was to in no way be softened, so that it looked more pleasant on screen or whatever. We wanted really raw emotion. Often times we want beautiful shots of women who hurt; we want the female to still be beautiful when she is experiencing pain or intense feeling. We really wanted to break that down on screen, so if it was a bit awkward, or overwhelming, we just went with it. We were very thoughtful with my positioning onscreen, I wanted nothing to do with belittlement, or anything that would suggest that.
Though the song deals with intense subject matter, we didn't want the video to feel dark. It's a moment of liberation. So we chose a lot of bright locations, a lot of bright colours, especially in the styling.
We found the human exploitation of nature to display the 'commodification and control of femininity'. Symbolically, the female has been related to a 'flower'. We wanted to show the processing and packaging of flowers to display what the female goes through culturally, how she is expected to be.

Fashion is obviously referenced through the title and there are a few fashionable points in the video which stood out to me – such as the red lipstick and the super glam high-fashion imagery towards the beginning. What guided the wardrobe choices?
Fashion plays a huge role in the song. The idea that when a woman decides to dress in a sexy way, she is 'asking for it' [or] that her choice of wear permits certain male behaviour, is just ridiculous to me. Also, culturally, there is the expectation that when a woman wears certain items of clothing, she is expected to act a certain way. I wanted to wear clothing that made me feel sexy, without the demands of needing to act that way. I could scream and shout in a miniskirt, or in a beautiful flower dress, challenging the roles that those items often instill in women to play out.

Flowers play a huge role as a symbolic prop. How and why the greenhouse / flower farm setting chosen, and how easy or difficult was it to shoot in?
The greenhouse displays the control that humans have over the natural, in this case the flower. We wanted it to symbolize the cultural and societal expectations and controls that are placed on women.
It was quite an easy location to shoot in, but it wasn't easy to get access to. Kevan worked really hard to convince the owners to let us shoot there. We said it was an piece on the poetry behind flowers and that we were doing it for our final project for art school. We had to twist the truth a bit !

How did the decision come about to incorporate dance and movement into the second part of this piece?
In the first half of the video, we wanted to show the female as objectified -- the rigidity that is often felt from expectation. So I don't really move that much. I tried to be more like an object in most of the shots. There is the 'walking flower shot' -- the narrator in the video, and in all the other ones, I am just still, posed. We wanted the second half to explore movement and a feeling of freedom, as a strong contrast to the first half. I danced for many years of my life, and it just felt right really great to return to that openness in movement.

There is one scene with a number of male onlookers in the background. It is a departure from the rest of the shots, and for that reason, stands out despite it subtle incorporation of other people. Can you talk about these scenes?
This just happened completely off-chance. We were shooting in the forest, and all of a sudden all these men appeared and started jumping off from a cliff behind me. They were watching me move for awhile, I kind of felt like I was on display, so we broke the silence and asked if we could film them jumping, and made them a part of the experience. We just stumbled upon this display of masculinity. We wanted to portray it, and like the rest of the video, it just came to us by chance. A lot of the shots in this video weren't planned, we had a lot of concepts we wanted to portray and we found that through being open the moments would often present themselves.

Hajooj Kuka's short yet powerful Beats of the Antonov is a poignant documentary on the war-ravaged border between North and South Sudan, set against the backdrop of refugee communities who have only one another to cling on to. Yet thanks to Kuka's insistence on giving the refugees a voice to speak, Beats of the Antonov is an optimistic film that shows how communities can thrive even as people actively try to destroy them.

Much of Beats of the Antonov is centered around Sudanese communities finding hope through song and dance. Men play the stringed rebaba, while children and adults sing their own songs about the strife of war, much like modern-day Woody Guthries. The film has philosophical ramifications as well, such as when ethnomusicologist explains why "girl music" is especially important to the Sudanese people, while also engaging in a debate with a colleague over what it actually means to be Sudanese.

Beats of the Antonov Soundtrack Sampler

What it means to be Sudanese a question that is explored throughout the film, and there is a stark and real juxtaposition to it all. The refugee communities look downright happy during periods of song and dance, until human sirens hail the coming of the Antonov, the Russian planes used by Omar Al-Bashri's regime to bomb villages in Sudan. Kuka's cameras run and dive for cover with the rest of the refugees during those moments, and you are forced to remember the horrible crisis that unfolds on the screen happens every day of the refugees' lives.

Kuka's approach to the documentary deserves heaps of praise. It would be too easy to just show the guts of splattered cows after a bomb explodes or images of starving children to get the point across that the war in Sudan is a terrible thing. But Kuka strays far from the easy, and lazy, way of reporting war. Instead, he puts the humanity of it upfront. Kuka shows the Sudanese people who are affected by their surroundings, and gives each of them enough time to present his or her own story. The result is a documentary with a rich blend of voices and points of view, all culminating in just how hard it is to answer what is seemingly a simple question: "What does it mean to be Sudanese?"

Beats of the Antonov is an enchanting look into something that has gone on for so long that much of the world has forgotten that a civil war is even taking place in Sudan right now. The documentary is a sobering look at what war does to a community, but also a heroic tale of how music and art stay with us even when a situation is most dire.

Hajooj Kuka's short yet powerful Beats of the Antonov is a poignant documentary on the war-ravaged border between North and South Sudan, set against the backdrop of refugee communities who have only one another to cling on to. Yet thanks to Kuka's insistence on giving the refugees a voice to speak, Beats of the Antonov is an optimistic film that shows how communities can thrive even as people actively try to destroy them.
Much of Beats of the Antonov is centered around Sudanese communities finding hope through song and dance. Men play the stringed rebaba, while children and adults sing their own songs about the strife of war, much like modern-day Woody Guthries. The film has philosophical ramifications as well, such as when ethnomusicologist explains why "girl music" is especially important to the Sudanese people, while also engaging in a debate with a colleague over what it actually means to be Sudanese.

Beats of the Antonov Soundtrack Sampler

What it means to be Sudanese a question that is explored throughout the film, and there is a stark and real juxtaposition to it all. The refugee communities look downright happy during periods of song and dance, until human sirens hail the coming of the Antonov, the Russian planes used by Omar Al-Bashri's regime to bomb villages in Sudan. Kuka's cameras run and dive for cover with the rest of the refugees during those moments, and you are forced to remember the horrible crisis that unfolds on the screen happens every day of the refugees' lives.
Kuka's approach to the documentary deserves heaps of praise. It would be too easy to just show the guts of splattered cows after a bomb explodes or images of starving children to get the point across that the war in Sudan is a terrible thing. But Kuka strays far from the easy, and lazy, way of reporting war. Instead, he puts the humanity of it upfront. Kuka shows the Sudanese people who are affected by their surroundings, and gives each of them enough time to present his or her own story. The result is a documentary with a rich blend of voices and points of view, all culminating in just how hard it is to answer what is seemingly a simple question: "What does it mean to be Sudanese?"
Beats of the Antonov is an enchanting look into something that has gone on for so long that much of the world has forgotten that a civil war is even taking place in Sudan right now. The documentary is a sobering look at what war does to a community, but also a heroic tale of how music and art stay with us even when a situation is most dire.

Platform, the second full-length from San Francisco musician, producer, and conceptual artist Holly Herndon, tackles the many confusing, conflicted layers of modern living, in the form of a poppy, accessible dancefloor sound sculpture.

Sine the fall of the Berlin Wall, there's been much lamentation and hand-wringing for the decline of an overarching cultural narrative, as we fall farther and faster down the postmodern wormhole. This lack of commentary may have something to do with too many viewpoints, too much to take in, or too many ways of looking at things. But while we many not be able to define, definitively, the world we are living in, it would be false to say there is no "Sound Of Now 2015" -- much like when former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's defined hardcore pornography by saying: "I know it when I see it."

"I think our society likes to talk about technology in really black and white terms, so things are simply defined as positive or negative. That doesn't solve any problems and I think it can be anti-intellectual. So with my work, I like to 'complexify' issues a little bit and show that certain concepts are not just simply good or bad. With a track like 'Home' it's obviously very critical of the NSA and aspects of technology in my life and people have been like, 'So, does that mean you don't like your laptop anymore?' My response is always, 'No, that's not what that means.' It means that I can still have a love and appreciation of that as a tool but you can always still be critical of it." - Holly Herndon, via The Quietus

Modern, futuristic music is immediately identifiable: we know it when we see or hear it. One of the most common signifiers of modern music would be the mutated, modulated sound of the human voice -- chopped and slurred into an anonymous, androgynous blur. From the otherworldly moaning of Burial's Untrue to the genderfuck anonymity of 18+, to the post-everything mutations of Fever Ray & The Knife, all have been accepted and championed as being entirely contemporary.

This digitization, like the technology that surrounds us like a miasma, is a double-edged sword. On one hand, our interconnected world has made all conversations about privilege and equality more possible than ever, forcing us to put ourselves in the shoes/sandals/hooves of other people from all over the world. On the other, it can be tempting to say that these issues no longer exist -- that we are "post-racism", "post-sexism" -- but we all have our meat suits, our hang-ups, our conditioning. We're not out of the woods.

Holly Herndon tackles these dualities, knowingly, and with great aplomb, while still making a great artpop dance record. In a recent interview with The Quietus, she spoke pragmatically, about dealing with the world, as it is, including technology. She's not interested in looking backward, or lamenting. She's interested in moving forward, and finding positive solutions.

Herndon circumnavigates digital pitfalls, via collaboration, turning the hermetic vision of the isolated producer on its ear. Two of Platform's collaborators -- Mat Dryhurst and Claire Tolans -- act as shadowy subtexts, illustrating the silhouette of a mission statement.

Mat Dryhurst is a musician and computer programmer, who inspired Herndon with his concept of "net concrete", a patch in the academic computer music program MaxMSP, which can convert personal web browser history into audio data, like an accelerated, out of control take on musique concrete. Net concrete's sound collage can be heard on "Home", an atmospheric and vaguely disassociated romance, between surveillance and the surveyed, full of crackling, crinkling percussive rattles, and weightless, unearthly basstones that sound like they were dipped in motor oil. This sound collage is rough, spastic, and noisy, not keeping with the hyperclean minimal aesthetic commonly associated with the futuristic. The net concrete approach places Platform on a continuum with fellow data-hacker/cultural commentator James Ferraro, with his influential NYC, HELL 3:00AM. While James Ferraro's concrete statement may sound like robotripping in the world's largest mall with food poisoning, Herndon's sculptures seem almost loving, with clips of lovers laughing, snagged from Skype conversations, mixed in amidst the bleeps, burrs, and blurry rumbles.

Holly Herndon -- "Home" Music Video

Infamous Berlin Community Radio personality Claire Tolan appears on "Lonely At The Top," which may be Platform's most impactful track, and also its most experimental. "Lonely At The Top" features Tolan whispering comforting corporate-speak adages over a bedrock of the sounds of a massage, and the sparse clicking of fingers on a keyboard, with no backing music whatsoever. It's like eavesdropping on the most sympathetic customer service representative of all time. It is a somewhat sad, sick, and also hilarious comment on high-priced professionals, paying $100/hr for a friendly ear, to have someone tell you, "You're worth it," and "You're doing great!" Like the rest of Platform, there is not one easy reading of "Lonely At The Top". It seems like a critique and observation of corporate culture, but we wonder if Herndon and Tolan are just doling out the top-shelf services for the masses. We all need to be needed, and we all want to feel special. It's nice to hear it, sometimes.

Claire Tolan is also one of the leading icons of ASMR -- autonomous sensory meridian response -- that is defined as a pleasurable tingling sensation, in your head and scalp, that is often produced by the sound of whispering -- or other sensory stimuli. Her cameo on Platform is one more example that Herndon is seeking out every possible permutation of the human voice and its effects, and that she's willing to use every tool at her disposal for good, not ill.

Without knowing the present, it can be difficult to picture the future. Living in 2015 can feel like listening to millions of voices, shouting at once. It can be difficult to know who to listen to. We might as well learn to make music out of the din.

Platform, the second full-length from San Francisco musician, producer, and conceptual artist Holly Herndon, tackles the many confusing, conflicted layers of modern living, in the form of a poppy, accessible dancefloor sound sculpture.
Sine the fall of the Berlin Wall, there's been much lamentation and hand-wringing for the decline of an overarching cultural narrative, as we fall farther and faster down the postmodern wormhole. This lack of commentary may have something to do with too many viewpoints, too much to take in, or too many ways of looking at things. But while we many not be able to define, definitively, the world we are living in, it would be false to say there is no "Sound Of Now 2015" -- much like when former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's defined hardcore pornography by saying: "I know it when I see it."

"I think our society likes to talk about technology in really black and white terms, so things are simply defined as positive or negative. That doesn't solve any problems and I think it can be anti-intellectual. So with my work, I like to 'complexify' issues a little bit and show that certain concepts are not just simply good or bad. With a track like 'Home' it's obviously very critical of the NSA and aspects of technology in my life and people have been like, 'So, does that mean you don't like your laptop anymore?' My response is always, 'No, that's not what that means.' It means that I can still have a love and appreciation of that as a tool but you can always still be critical of it." - Holly Herndon, via The Quietus

Platform by Holly Herndon
Modern, futuristic music is immediately identifiable: we know it when we see or hear it. One of the most common signifiers of modern music would be the mutated, modulated sound of the human voice -- chopped and slurred into an anonymous, androgynous blur. From the otherworldly moaning of Burial's Untrue to the genderfuck anonymity of 18+, to the post-everything mutations of Fever Ray & The Knife, all have been accepted and championed as being entirely contemporary.
This digitization, like the technology that surrounds us like a miasma, is a double-edged sword. On one hand, our interconnected world has made all conversations about privilege and equality more possible than ever, forcing us to put ourselves in the shoes/sandals/hooves of other people from all over the world. On the other, it can be tempting to say that these issues no longer exist -- that we are "post-racism", "post-sexism" -- but we all have our meat suits, our hang-ups, our conditioning. We're not out of the woods.
Holly Herndon tackles these dualities, knowingly, and with great aplomb, while still making a great artpop dance record. In a recent interview with The Quietus, she spoke pragmatically, about dealing with the world, as it is, including technology. She's not interested in looking backward, or lamenting. She's interested in moving forward, and finding positive solutions.

Herndon circumnavigates digital pitfalls, via collaboration, turning the hermetic vision of the isolated producer on its ear. Two of Platform's collaborators -- Mat Dryhurst and Claire Tolans -- act as shadowy subtexts, illustrating the silhouette of a mission statement.
Mat Dryhurst is a musician and computer programmer, who inspired Herndon with his concept of "net concrete", a patch in the academic computer music program MaxMSP, which can convert personal web browser history into audio data, like an accelerated, out of control take on musique concrete. Net concrete's sound collage can be heard on "Home", an atmospheric and vaguely disassociated romance, between surveillance and the surveyed, full of crackling, crinkling percussive rattles, and weightless, unearthly basstones that sound like they were dipped in motor oil. This sound collage is rough, spastic, and noisy, not keeping with the hyperclean minimal aesthetic commonly associated with the futuristic. The net concrete approach places Platform on a continuum with fellow data-hacker/cultural commentator James Ferraro, with his influential NYC, HELL 3:00AM. While James Ferraro's concrete statement may sound like robotripping in the world's largest mall with food poisoning, Herndon's sculptures seem almost loving, with clips of lovers laughing, snagged from Skype conversations, mixed in amidst the bleeps, burrs, and blurry rumbles.

Holly Herndon -- "Home" Music Video

Infamous Berlin Community Radio personality Claire Tolan appears on "Lonely At The Top," which may be Platform's most impactful track, and also its most experimental. "Lonely At The Top" features Tolan whispering comforting corporate-speak adages over a bedrock of the sounds of a massage, and the sparse clicking of fingers on a keyboard, with no backing music whatsoever. It's like eavesdropping on the most sympathetic customer service representative of all time. It is a somewhat sad, sick, and also hilarious comment on high-priced professionals, paying $100/hr for a friendly ear, to have someone tell you, "You're worth it," and "You're doing great!" Like the rest of Platform, there is not one easy reading of "Lonely At The Top". It seems like a critique and observation of corporate culture, but we wonder if Herndon and Tolan are just doling out the top-shelf services for the masses. We all need to be needed, and we all want to feel special. It's nice to hear it, sometimes.
Claire Tolan is also one of the leading icons of ASMR -- autonomous sensory meridian response -- that is defined as a pleasurable tingling sensation, in your head and scalp, that is often produced by the sound of whispering -- or other sensory stimuli. Her cameo on Platform is one more example that Herndon is seeking out every possible permutation of the human voice and its effects, and that she's willing to use every tool at her disposal for good, not ill.
Without knowing the present, it can be difficult to picture the future. Living in 2015 can feel like listening to millions of voices, shouting at once. It can be difficult to know who to listen to. We might as well learn to make music out of the din.

SIFF 2015 (Seattle International Film Festival) really shows off its vitality as the longest film festival in North America this year. Operating a host of its own theatres this year, from the SIFF Cinema Uptown and SIFF Cinema to the newly acquired SIFF Egyptian, SIFF is going strong, and this year, many of our top picks are centered around recent political happenings, music trends, food, murder, and freedom.

Schedules are subject to change, so please consult the official festival website before you head out!

SIFF 2015 (Seattle International Film Festival 2015) Top Film Picks

African Films

Beats of the Antonov (Sudan)Directed by Hajooj Kuka
In an area of the world completely torn asunder by war, the one thing South Sudan can hold on to is their vibrant musical culture as citizens are forced into refugee camps to survive. Hajooj Kuka takes a look at the resilience of the Sudanese communities in these terrible situations. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

May 21, 6:30 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 22, 4:00 @ Pacific Place 11

Australian & Pacific Islander Films

Charlie's Country (Australia) * TOP PICK *Directed by Rolf de Heer
An out-of-sorts and aging aboriginal named Charlie paints tree bark and fishes most days, but feels increasingly estranged from the Australia of his youth. The last straw comes when police confiscate Charlie's spear as a weapon, prompting him to leave his community and head out indeterminately into "the bush." But the new Australia isn't done with him yet. Charlie's Country is a heartbreaking portrayal of a changing world with little respect for marginalized peoples. Best Actor (David Gulpilil), Cannes Film Festival. - Aaron Bruner

May 15, 4:00 @ Harvard Exit
May 16, 9:30 @ Harvard Exit

Carribean Films

Behavior - Conducta (Cuba) * TOP PICK *Directed by Ernesto Daranas
A polarizing hit in its home country, this rare film from Cuba chronicles the drama that ensues after a seasoned school teacher makes it her mission to remove her student from a governmental re-education facility. - Vivian Hua

East Asian & Southeast Asian Films

A Hard Day (South Korea)Directed by Seong-hun Kim
Homicide detective Ko Gun-soo accidentally commits a hit and run on a lonely stretch of highway. As he quickly tries to hide evidence and cover his tracks, his life goes from bad to worse in this South Korean thriller. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

May 19, 9:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 20, 9:30pm @ SIFF Egyptian

Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories - Cha và con và (Vietnam, France, Germany)* TOP PICK *Directed by Phan Dang Di
Modern Saigon is seen in all its raw, bold, and sensuous colors, when viewed through the eyes of three promiscuous youngsters who explore their own boundaries without fear. - Vivian Hua

June 3, 9:30pm @ Harvard Exit
June 5, 12:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

The Cave of Silken Web - Pan Si Dong (Hong Kong)Directed by Meng Hua Ho
"This 1967 Shaw Brothers' classic is an action-packed remake of the 1927 silent epic. In The Cave of the Silken Web, our traveling monk and his three companions encounter seven sexy spider demons, convinced they will live forever on their flesh." - SIFF WebsiteVIEW TRAILER

May 19, 9:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 20, 9:30pm @ SIFF Egyptian

Daughter - Dukhtar (Pakistan)Directed by Afia Nathaniel
In old-school dramatic fashion, this film from Pakistan follows the journey of a mother and her ten-year-old daughter as they flee from an arranged wedding with a local tribal leader, through cityscapes and natural formations. - Vivian HuaVIEW TRAILER

The Golden Era - Huang Jin Shi Dai (China, Hong Kong)Directed by Ann HuiThe Golden Era focuses on five years in the life of Xio Hang, a political writer and influencer during the 1930s. The film offers insight on the Chinese political climate of that time as well as weaves in her philosophical musings: "I cannot choose how I will live or how I will die, but I can choose how I love and how I live. This is the freedom that I want. My Golden Era."VIEW TRAILER

How To Win At Checkers (Every Time) (Thailand, USA, Indonesia, Hong Kong)Directed by Josh Kim
A well-shot but not overly slick coming-of-age film, Checkers tells the story of Oat, his older brother Ek, and the military draft lottery that comes for every Thai man at age 21. The film's use of Thailand's complex sexual spectrum as a subtle backdrop rather than the main focus is a refreshing conceit. The film does a wonderful job of showing the character of Thailand, as well as telling a fairly compelling story of growing up and brotherly love. - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILER

Little Forest (Japan) * TOP PICK *Directed by Junichi Mori
This gargantuan, four-part series has to be the quietest, most insular movie featured at this year's festival. This film is about two things: the beautiful Japanese countryside and cooking. The food looks good, the scenery is wonderful, and everything else doesn't matter. Each portion represents a season, and features the delicious foods you can cook using sources found/harvested during that period. Pure audio/visual catnip. - Allen Huang

A Matter of Interpretation (South Korea) * TOP PICK *Directed by Kwang-kuk Lee
A talky, Jarmusch-esque meditation on life transitions and dreams. The film's convoluted structure (yes, dreams within dreams) is confounding at times, but the excellent acting of Shin Dong Mi provides the necessary compass for one's enjoyment. The Korean language can be very nuanced and clever; this film aims to show just how. - Allen Huang

Snow on the Blades - Zakurozaka no Adauchi (Japan) * TOP PICK *Directed by Setsuro Wakamatsu
A tangentially relevant take on the Samurai Vengeance trope, Snow on the Blades has fallen retainer Kingo fighting against two unbeatable foes: Gentrification and Modernization. What is the importance of "right" and "wrong" when it comes to the passing of time? What do you do when you swear revenge but then everyone is just, "who cares?" - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILER

When Marnie Was There - Omoide no Marnie (Japan)Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
The (potential) final feature film produced by legendary animation studio Ghibli. Marnie is not an ambitious film but features all the Ghibli notes: a young woman coming-of-age, supernatural occurrences tempered by the simple joys of loving and being loved. Go see it, just because you'll miss it when it's gone. - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILER

May 16, 10:00am @ SIFF Egyptian
May 20, 7:00pm @ SIFF Egyptian

Eastern European & Western European Films

Liza, The Fox-Fairy (Hungary) * TOP PICK *Directed by Károly Ujj-Mészáros
Advertised as the newest Amelie, Liza, the Fox Fairy is a romantic romp featuring off-kilter color palettes and slick editing. Though the Japanophile quirks (especially the poor parodies of Japanese '60s pop) are ultimately an unnecessary and orientalist distraction, the comic timing is on point and the characters are likable enough to guide viewers through the lumpy cultural mish-mash. - Allen Huang

Marshland - La Isla Minima (Spain)Directed by Alberto Rodríguez
A pair of detectives head to southern Spain to investigate the brutal murder of two sisters in 1980. What they unearth is a drug trafficking ring and a possible serial killer looking to strike again. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

Next Time I'll Aim For The Heart - La prochaine fois je viserai le coeur (France) * TOP PICK *Directed by Cédric Anger
This is the true story of French serial killer Alain Lamare, who also just happened to be a policeman in charge of investigating his own crimes. Director Cedric Angers tells the story from the killer's point of view, with a strong performance from Guillaume Canet to carry the film as one of the better crime thrillers. - Peter Woodburn

Not All Is Vigil - No todo es vigilia (Spain, Colombia)Directed by Hermes Paralluelo
Old people can be at once adorable and irritating, as is proven in this semi-documentary that follows director Hermes Paralluelo's real grandparents through their daily ups and downs -- which, after so many years, seem to be less ups and downs and more simply just existing, for better or for worse. - Vivian Hua

One Million Dubliners (Ireland)Directed by Aoife Kelleher
This documentary takes a tour of Ireland through the business of death. One Million Dubliners focuses on Ireland's national necropolis, the Glasnevin Cemetery, which hosts more graves than there are living citizens in Dublin. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

May 23, 11:00am @ Pacific Place
May 24, 6:30pm @ Harvard Exit

Set Fire To The Stars (United Kingdom)Directed by Andy Goddard
Elijah Wood plays poetry also-ran John Malcom Brinnin, accompanying the unpredictable and wildly talented Dylan Thomas, played by Celyn Jones. Poetry and literature fans will no doubt find much to enjoy in this film, as every line is delivered with the cadence and urgency of a playwright. Those who aren't privy to the figures portrayed in the film will find enjoyment from the interplay of Woods and Jones, who enact the classic Odd Couple jaunt but with a smidgen more class. - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILER

May 15, 7:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

Vincent - Vincent n'a pas d'écailles (France) * TOP PICK *Directed by Thomas Salvador
Vincent is just a normal French guy working a normal French job until one day he discovers he has superpowers. His normal life suddenly gets turned upside down as much as Vincent aims to redefine what it means to be a superhero film in a world full of Marvel and DC Comics. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

Middle Eastern Films

The Color of Pomegranates - Sayat Nova (Armenia) * TOP PICK *Directed by Sergei Parajanov
"Sergei Parajanov's empirical masterpiece loosely follows the life of Sayat Nova, "King of Song," an Armenian poet and musician born in the 18th century, through vibrant sets and costumes and hypnotic shots. This colorful and avant-garde masterpiece provides an utterly transformative cinematic experience." - From the SIFF Website

May 20, 7:00pm @ Harvard Exit

Red Rose (Iran, France, Greece)Directed by Sepideh Farsi
Using a mix of cinéma vérité and up-close intimate moments, director Sepideh Farsi weaves a tale of the relationship of a young, Iranian activist and a passive, middle-aged man as they try and make sense of a changing country during the 2009 Green Revolution. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

May 17, 8:00 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 21, 3:30 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

North American Films

3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets (United States) * TOP PICK *Directed by Marc Silver
In 2012, 17-year-old Jordan Davis was gunned down inside his car all because someone thought his rap music was playing too loud. As racial tensions continue to mount in America, this documentary is an essential accompaniment to the national conversation. - Peter Woodburn

All Things Must Pass (United States)Directed by Colin Hanks
Colin Hanks makes his directoral debut with a look into the rise and fall of Tower Records. The documentary combines insider interviews and archival footage as he chronicles a company that has been one of the biggest players in the changing music industry of the past decade. - Peter Woodburn

May 30, 7:00 @ Harvard Exit
May 31, 3:00 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

The Astrologer (United States)Directed by Craig Denney
"A true WTF archival discovery, this mind-bogglingly off-the-wall '70s flick is a maniacal tribute to DIY filmmaking that tells the director/star/astrologer's "true" story of discovering psychic powers and using them to become a continent-hopping expert on astrology, diamond-smuggling, and film production. And some other things. Really anything." - From the SIFF WebsiteVIEW TRAILER

May 24, 11:55pm @ SIFF Cinema Egyptian

Experimenter (United States) * TOP PICK *Directed by Michael Almereyda
Almost everyone knows of famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who changed the face of the entire field thanks to his "obedience experiments". Experimenter, a biopic which features a star cast of Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram and Winona Ryder as his wife, sheds light on the passionate and controversial researcher. - Vivian Hua

H. (United States, Argentina) * TOP PICK *Directed by Daniel Garcia, Rania Attieh
Set in Troy, New York, H. is an off-kilter drama that takes place during strangely apocalpytic days. After a meteor-like object explodes in the sky, nearby residents awaken suddenly to find that they had slept through entire days while physics goes haywire: coffee leaks through cups and water flows backwards.H. is somehow co-sponsored by Gucci and finds its strength in sound and experimentation that helps tell its increasingly psychedelic tale. - Vivian Hua

License to Operate (United States) * TOP PICK *Directed by James Lipetzky
"License to Operate" makes its world premiere at SIFF. The documentary showcases the LTOs in Los Angeles, a term given to gang members who are leaders and hold power based on actions of their past. Only these leaders are trying to rebuild their community and stop the cycle of gang violence they were not only a part of, but helped proliferate in their pasts. - Peter Woodburn

May 26, 8:00 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 27, 3:45 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

natural history (United States)Directed by James Benning
"Posited by the museum's director Christian Koeberl as possibly Benning's only work shot indoors, the 77-minute natural history is a series of almost entirely still, almost entirely humanless shots inside the museum, essentially alternating, or nearly so, images from the archives—not the exhibits—of the museum's collection with images of corridors, hallways, offices, and other rooms hidden within the building." - Mubi.com

May 16, 8:00pm @ SIFF Film Center
May 17, 4:30pm @ SIFF Film Center

Wet Bum (Canada)Directed by Lindsay MacKay
14-year-old Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) delivers a stellar performance of a girl who explores the horrors and humiliation that is life in middle school and high school. Sarah finds herself most comfortable when in the water, which begins to lead to a confusing relationship with her flirtatious swim instructor. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

A Second Chance (Denmark, Sweden)Directed by Susanne Bier
Academy Award-winning director Susanne Bier (Brothers) is back with a psycological drama that tells the story of a mourning police officer switching his recently deceased child with a junkie's neglected infant. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

Itsi Bitsi (Denmark, Croatia, Sweden, Argentina)Directed by Ole Christian Madsen
The Danish psychedelic band Steppeulven are the subject of this biopic. Set in the 1960s, this story of counterculture music, sex and a lot of drugs brings the birth of a Danish version of Captain Beefheart. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

Out of Nature - Mot Naturen (Norway)Directed by Marte Vold, Ole Giæver
Martin is a socially awkward Norwegian who goes on a hike to try and help resolve the conflicts of his personal demons. Set against the flawless Norwegian countryside, Out of Nature is a hilarious piece about introspection and contemplation. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

Paris of the North - París norðursins (Iceland)Directed by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson
Recovering alcoholic Hugi has to get a new start, so he decides to move away from Reykjavik to a small fishing town in northwest Iceland. Everything is going fine, until Hugi's hard-drinking father arrives. His first film, Either Way, screened at SIFF in 2012. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILER

SIFF 2015 (Seattle International Film Festival) really shows off its vitality as the longest film festival in North America this year. Operating a host of its own theatres this year, from the SIFF Cinema Uptown and SIFF Cinema to the newly acquired SIFF Egyptian, SIFF is going strong, and this year, many of our top picks are centered around recent political happenings, music trends, food, murder, and freedom.

Schedules are subject to change, so please consult the official festival website before you head out!

SIFF 2015 (Seattle International Film Festival 2015) Top Film Picks

African Films

Beats of the Antonov (Sudan)Directed by Hajooj Kuka
In an area of the world completely torn asunder by war, the one thing South Sudan can hold on to is their vibrant musical culture as citizens are forced into refugee camps to survive. Hajooj Kuka takes a look at the resilience of the Sudanese communities in these terrible situations. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 21, 6:30 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 22, 4:00 @ Pacific Place 11

Australian & Pacific Islander Films

Charlie's Country (Australia) * TOP PICK *Directed by Rolf de Heer
An out-of-sorts and aging aboriginal named Charlie paints tree bark and fishes most days, but feels increasingly estranged from the Australia of his youth. The last straw comes when police confiscate Charlie's spear as a weapon, prompting him to leave his community and head out indeterminately into "the bush." But the new Australia isn't done with him yet. Charlie's Country is a heartbreaking portrayal of a changing world with little respect for marginalized peoples. Best Actor (David Gulpilil), Cannes Film Festival. - Aaron BrunerMay 15, 4:00 @ Harvard Exit
May 16, 9:30 @ Harvard Exit

Carribean Films

Behavior - Conducta (Cuba) * TOP PICK *Directed by Ernesto Daranas
A polarizing hit in its home country, this rare film from Cuba chronicles the drama that ensues after a seasoned school teacher makes it her mission to remove her student from a governmental re-education facility. - Vivian HuaMay 15, 3:30pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas Cinema
May 17, 6:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 19, 3:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

East Asian & Southeast Asian Films

A Hard Day (South Korea)Directed by Seong-hun Kim
Homicide detective Ko Gun-soo accidentally commits a hit and run on a lonely stretch of highway. As he quickly tries to hide evidence and cover his tracks, his life goes from bad to worse in this South Korean thriller. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 19, 9:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 20, 9:30pm @ SIFF Egyptian

Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories - Cha và con và (Vietnam, France, Germany)
* TOP PICK *Directed by Phan Dang Di
Modern Saigon is seen in all its raw, bold, and sensuous colors, when viewed through the eyes of three promiscuous youngsters who explore their own boundaries without fear. - Vivian HuaJune 3, 9:30pm @ Harvard Exit
June 5, 12:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

Daughter - Dukhtar (Pakistan)Directed by Afia Nathaniel
In old-school dramatic fashion, this film from Pakistan follows the journey of a mother and her ten-year-old daughter as they flee from an arranged wedding with a local tribal leader, through cityscapes and natural formations. - Vivian HuaVIEW TRAILERMay 20, 9:30pm @ AMC Pacific Place 11
May 21, 4:30pm @ AMC Pacific Place 11

The Golden Era - Huang Jin Shi Dai (China, Hong Kong)Directed by Ann HuiThe Golden Era focuses on five years in the life of Xio Hang, a political writer and influencer during the 1930s. The film offers insight on the Chinese political climate of that time as well as weaves in her philosophical musings: "I cannot choose how I will live or how I will die, but I can choose how I love and how I live. This is the freedom that I want. My Golden Era."
VIEW TRAILERMay 23, 1:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 24, 7:30pm @ Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center
May 30, 9:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

How To Win At Checkers (Every Time) (Thailand, USA, Indonesia, Hong Kong)Directed by Josh Kim
A well-shot but not overly slick coming-of-age film, Checkers tells the story of Oat, his older brother Ek, and the military draft lottery that comes for every Thai man at age 21. The film's use of Thailand's complex sexual spectrum as a subtle backdrop rather than the main focus is a refreshing conceit. The film does a wonderful job of showing the character of Thailand, as well as telling a fairly compelling story of growing up and brotherly love. - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILERMay 20, 9:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 27 4:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

Little Forest (Japan) * TOP PICK *Directed by Junichi Mori
This gargantuan, four-part series has to be the quietest, most insular movie featured at this year's festival. This film is about two things: the beautiful Japanese countryside and cooking. The food looks good, the scenery is wonderful, and everything else doesn't matter. Each portion represents a season, and features the delicious foods you can cook using sources found/harvested during that period. Pure audio/visual catnip. - Allen HuangMay 18, 6:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 24, 12:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

A Matter of Interpretation (South Korea) * TOP PICK *Directed by Kwang-kuk Lee
A talky, Jarmusch-esque meditation on life transitions and dreams. The film's convoluted structure (yes, dreams within dreams) is confounding at times, but the excellent acting of Shin Dong Mi provides the necessary compass for one's enjoyment. The Korean language can be very nuanced and clever; this film aims to show just how. - Allen HuangMay 28, 8:30pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas
May 29, 9:30pm @ Harvard Exit
May 31, 1:30pm @ Harvard Exit

Snow on the Blades - Zakurozaka no Adauchi (Japan) * TOP PICK *Directed by Setsuro Wakamatsu
A tangentially relevant take on the Samurai Vengeance trope, Snow on the Blades has fallen retainer Kingo fighting against two unbeatable foes: Gentrification and Modernization. What is the importance of "right" and "wrong" when it comes to the passing of time? What do you do when you swear revenge but then everyone is just, "who cares?" - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILERMay 16, 6:00pm @ SIFF Egyptian
May 17, 1:30pm @ Harvard Exit
May 18, 6:00pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas

When Marnie Was There - Omoide no Marnie (Japan)Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
The (potential) final feature film produced by legendary animation studio Ghibli. Marnie is not an ambitious film but features all the Ghibli notes: a young woman coming-of-age, supernatural occurrences tempered by the simple joys of loving and being loved. Go see it, just because you'll miss it when it's gone. - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILERMay 16, 10:00am @ SIFF Egyptian
May 20, 7:00pm @ SIFF Egyptian

Eastern European & Western European Films

Liza, The Fox-Fairy (Hungary) * TOP PICK *Directed by Károly Ujj-Mészáros
Advertised as the newest Amelie, Liza, the Fox Fairy is a romantic romp featuring off-kilter color palettes and slick editing. Though the Japanophile quirks (especially the poor parodies of Japanese '60s pop) are ultimately an unnecessary and orientalist distraction, the comic timing is on point and the characters are likable enough to guide viewers through the lumpy cultural mish-mash. - Allen Huang May 25, 12:00pm @ Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center
June 3, 8:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 5, 3:45pm @ Pacific Place

Next Time I'll Aim For The Heart - La prochaine fois je viserai le coeur (France) * TOP PICK *Directed by Cédric Anger
This is the true story of French serial killer Alain Lamare, who also just happened to be a policeman in charge of investigating his own crimes. Director Cedric Angers tells the story from the killer's point of view, with a strong performance from Guillaume Canet to carry the film as one of the better crime thrillers. - Peter WoodburnMay 31, 9:45pm @ SIFF Egyptian
June 2, 9:45pm @ SIFF Egyptian
June 3 @ 8:30pm @ Kirkland Performance Center

Not All Is Vigil - No todo es vigilia (Spain, Colombia)Directed by Hermes Paralluelo
Old people can be at once adorable and irritating, as is proven in this semi-documentary that follows director Hermes Paralluelo's real grandparents through their daily ups and downs -- which, after so many years, seem to be less ups and downs and more simply just existing, for better or for worse. - Vivian HuaMay 31, 6:00pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas
June 1, 7:00pm @ AMC Pacific Place 11

One Million Dubliners (Ireland)Directed by Aoife Kelleher
This documentary takes a tour of Ireland through the business of death. One Million Dubliners focuses on Ireland's national necropolis, the Glasnevin Cemetery, which hosts more graves than there are living citizens in Dublin. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 23, 11:00am @ Pacific Place
May 24, 6:30pm @ Harvard Exit

Set Fire To The Stars (United Kingdom)Directed by Andy Goddard
Elijah Wood plays poetry also-ran John Malcom Brinnin, accompanying the unpredictable and wildly talented Dylan Thomas, played by Celyn Jones. Poetry and literature fans will no doubt find much to enjoy in this film, as every line is delivered with the cadence and urgency of a playwright. Those who aren't privy to the figures portrayed in the film will find enjoyment from the interplay of Woods and Jones, who enact the classic Odd Couple jaunt but with a smidgen more class. - Allen HuangVIEW TRAILERMay 15, 7:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

Vincent - Vincent n'a pas d'écailles (France) * TOP PICK *Directed by Thomas Salvador
Vincent is just a normal French guy working a normal French job until one day he discovers he has superpowers. His normal life suddenly gets turned upside down as much as Vincent aims to redefine what it means to be a superhero film in a world full of Marvel and DC Comics. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 25, 3:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 28, 6:00pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas

Middle Eastern Films

The Color of Pomegranates - Sayat Nova (Armenia) * TOP PICK *Directed by Sergei Parajanov
"Sergei Parajanov's empirical masterpiece loosely follows the life of Sayat Nova, "King of Song," an Armenian poet and musician born in the 18th century, through vibrant sets and costumes and hypnotic shots. This colorful and avant-garde masterpiece provides an utterly transformative cinematic experience." - From the SIFF WebsiteMay 20, 7:00pm @ Harvard Exit

Red Rose (Iran, France, Greece)Directed by Sepideh Farsi
Using a mix of cinéma vérité and up-close intimate moments, director Sepideh Farsi weaves a tale of the relationship of a young, Iranian activist and a passive, middle-aged man as they try and make sense of a changing country during the 2009 Green Revolution. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 17, 8:00 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 21, 3:30 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

North American Films

3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets (United States) * TOP PICK *Directed by Marc Silver
In 2012, 17-year-old Jordan Davis was gunned down inside his car all because someone thought his rap music was playing too loud. As racial tensions continue to mount in America, this documentary is an essential accompaniment to the national conversation. - Peter WoodburnJune 2, 7:00 @ The Egyptian
June 3, 6:00 @ Kirkland Performance Center

All Things Must Pass (United States)Directed by Colin Hanks
Colin Hanks makes his directoral debut with a look into the rise and fall of Tower Records. The documentary combines insider interviews and archival footage as he chronicles a company that has been one of the biggest players in the changing music industry of the past decade. - Peter WoodburnMay 30, 7:00 @ Harvard Exit
May 31, 3:00 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

The Astrologer (United States)Directed by Craig Denney
"A true WTF archival discovery, this mind-bogglingly off-the-wall '70s flick is a maniacal tribute to DIY filmmaking that tells the director/star/astrologer's "true" story of discovering psychic powers and using them to become a continent-hopping expert on astrology, diamond-smuggling, and film production. And some other things. Really anything." - From the SIFF WebsiteVIEW TRAILERMay 24, 11:55pm @ SIFF Cinema Egyptian

Experimenter (United States) * TOP PICK *Directed by Michael Almereyda
Almost everyone knows of famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram, who changed the face of the entire field thanks to his "obedience experiments". Experimenter, a biopic which features a star cast of Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram and Winona Ryder as his wife, sheds light on the passionate and controversial researcher. - Vivian HuaJune 4, 6:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
June 6, 1:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

H. (United States, Argentina) * TOP PICK *Directed by Daniel Garcia, Rania Attieh
Set in Troy, New York, H. is an off-kilter drama that takes place during strangely apocalpytic days. After a meteor-like object explodes in the sky, nearby residents awaken suddenly to find that they had slept through entire days while physics goes haywire: coffee leaks through cups and water flows backwards.H. is somehow co-sponsored by Gucci and finds its strength in sound and experimentation that helps tell its increasingly psychedelic tale. - Vivian HuaMay 25, 6:30pm @ AMC Pacific Place 11
May 28, 4:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

License to Operate (United States) * TOP PICK *Directed by James Lipetzky
"License to Operate" makes its world premiere at SIFF. The documentary showcases the LTOs in Los Angeles, a term given to gang members who are leaders and hold power based on actions of their past. Only these leaders are trying to rebuild their community and stop the cycle of gang violence they were not only a part of, but helped proliferate in their pasts. - Peter WoodburnMay 26, 8:00 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 27, 3:45 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

natural history (United States)Directed by James Benning
"Posited by the museum's director Christian Koeberl as possibly Benning's only work shot indoors, the 77-minute natural history is a series of almost entirely still, almost entirely humanless shots inside the museum, essentially alternating, or nearly so, images from the archives—not the exhibits—of the museum's collection with images of corridors, hallways, offices, and other rooms hidden within the building." - Mubi.comMay 16, 8:00pm @ SIFF Film Center
May 17, 4:30pm @ SIFF Film Center

Wet Bum (Canada)Directed by Lindsay MacKay
14-year-old Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) delivers a stellar performance of a girl who explores the horrors and humiliation that is life in middle school and high school. Sarah finds herself most comfortable when in the water, which begins to lead to a confusing relationship with her flirtatious swim instructor. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 20, 6:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 30, 11:00am @ Pacific Place
May 31, 5:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

Itsi Bitsi (Denmark, Croatia, Sweden, Argentina)Directed by Ole Christian Madsen
The Danish psychedelic band Steppeulven are the subject of this biopic. Set in the 1960s, this story of counterculture music, sex and a lot of drugs brings the birth of a Danish version of Captain Beefheart. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 21, 9:30 @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 27, 8:30 @ Lincoln Square Cinemas
May 31, 9:30 @ Pacific Place

Out of Nature - Mot Naturen (Norway)Directed by Marte Vold, Ole Giæver
Martin is a socially awkward Norwegian who goes on a hike to try and help resolve the conflicts of his personal demons. Set against the flawless Norwegian countryside, Out of Nature is a hilarious piece about introspection and contemplation. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 24, 6:00pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas
June 1, 4:30pm @ SIFF Egyptian
June 3, 9:30pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown

Paris of the North - París norðursins (Iceland)Directed by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson
Recovering alcoholic Hugi has to get a new start, so he decides to move away from Reykjavik to a small fishing town in northwest Iceland. Everything is going fine, until Hugi's hard-drinking father arrives. His first film, Either Way, screened at SIFF in 2012. - Peter WoodburnVIEW TRAILERMay 15, 11:30am @ Pacific Place
May 19, 9:00pm @ SIFF Cinema Uptown
May 21, 3:30pm @ Lincoln Square Cinemas

Set almost exclusively in a tiny courtroom, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, is an Israeli-French film about a couple's lengthy battle for divorce. Simple from its get-go, the film's major strengths lie in its tense appeal and multiple layers of meaning, which build slowly through use of seemingly trivial gestures. Director-siblings Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz use the limitations of space, time, and color to give viewers a glimpse into Israeli society, where religious views and patriarchy can dominate female rights.

Throughout its duration, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is driven forth by fascinating, dialogue-driven interpersonal exchanges, which trample on with the mind-numbing appeal of a trashy daytime talk show. Time and time again, one hopes to honor Viviane Amsalem's basic request for divorce. but the head-scratching moments come when a number of witnesses appeal throughout the film's two hour duration, giving their contradictory testimonies about the couple's relationship.

But the dialogue is twisted, forked like the tongue of snake, and ever-revealing of mysteries. When Viviane Amsalem takes the stand and is questioned about her public outbursts which humiliated her husband in front of their neighbors, one can feel both skepticism and sympathy when she says, "It's easy to blame the one who yells. The one who whispers venom is innocent." The prosecutor then retaliates with, "He went to hell and back with you, and now you want to shame him?" -- and it is in moments such as this that Gett is impressively confusing. One cannot tell whether the wife or the husband is at fault, and the reality is that perhaps neither were, or both were. Much of Gett requires a thorough read between the lines, for every contentious point that is stated explicitly is bolstered by body language and assumptions which are unstated. What begins as clear and straight-forward becomes increasingly muddled with every insight from every friend, neighbor, or spiritual colleague, and the isolated clips of Viviane shedding tears are spliced in between testimonies with very little explanation.

Perhaps they are simply incompatible, and their fundamental differences alone are one cause of the never-ending divorce battle, which spans more than three years of humiliation and awkwardness on the part of both parties.

Nonetheless, it is with the spoken words and the easy-to-define problems that the film hinges. Her nature is secular while he is religious; he lacks romantic sensibility where she desires it. All of these incompatibilities float to the surface through intelligently written expressions, which accuse both parties with almost either weight. Yet in Israel's religious court, the fact that Viviane's husband, Elisha, provides for her financially and has never beaten her is lauded as an impressive accomplishment; the court hence cannot "force" the divorce, since domestic abuse was never at play. The basic rights of Viviane Amsalem are discounted time and time again in favor or a wife's "sacred" duties, even in the view of her relatives and female neighbors. Their reasons against divorce are many and are symptomatic of Israeli society: a single female in Israel lacks fruitful options for her future; Elisha is an upstanding and dependable member of society; and so on. In matters of the heart, Israel is vastly different from the Western world, and through the mechanism of divorce, Gett provides a dramatic glimpse into those differences.

Set in the same room and featuring the same characters who argue endlessly about the same situation, Gett could easily become a boring film, but complex balances make it successful. The relationship of Viviane and Elisha, in all its hopelessness and civility, manifests through their character traits as both address them directly with words, and as such, and the film's recursive nature finds great power in its spoken dialogue as well as the lines unspoken and the gestures unexplained.

Set almost exclusively in a tiny courtroom, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, is an Israeli-French film about a couple's lengthy battle for divorce. Simple from its get-go, the film's major strengths lie in its tense appeal and multiple layers of meaning, which build slowly through use of seemingly trivial gestures. Director-siblings Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz use the limitations of space, time, and color to give viewers a glimpse into Israeli society, where religious views and patriarchy can dominate female rights.

Throughout its duration, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is driven forth by fascinating, dialogue-driven interpersonal exchanges, which trample on with the mind-numbing appeal of a trashy daytime talk show. Time and time again, one hopes to honor Viviane Amsalem's basic request for divorce. but the head-scratching moments come when a number of witnesses appeal throughout the film's two hour duration, giving their contradictory testimonies about the couple's relationship.
But the dialogue is twisted, forked like the tongue of snake, and ever-revealing of mysteries. When Viviane Amsalem takes the stand and is questioned about her public outbursts which humiliated her husband in front of their neighbors, one can feel both skepticism and sympathy when she says, "It's easy to blame the one who yells. The one who whispers venom is innocent." The prosecutor then retaliates with, "He went to hell and back with you, and now you want to shame him?" -- and it is in moments such as this that Gett is impressively confusing. One cannot tell whether the wife or the husband is at fault, and the reality is that perhaps neither were, or both were. Much of Gett requires a thorough read between the lines, for every contentious point that is stated explicitly is bolstered by body language and assumptions which are unstated. What begins as clear and straight-forward becomes increasingly muddled with every insight from every friend, neighbor, or spiritual colleague, and the isolated clips of Viviane shedding tears are spliced in between testimonies with very little explanation.
Perhaps they are simply incompatible, and their fundamental differences alone are one cause of the never-ending divorce battle, which spans more than three years of humiliation and awkwardness on the part of both parties.
Nonetheless, it is with the spoken words and the easy-to-define problems that the film hinges. Her nature is secular while he is religious; he lacks romantic sensibility where she desires it. All of these incompatibilities float to the surface through intelligently written expressions, which accuse both parties with almost either weight. Yet in Israel's religious court, the fact that Viviane's husband, Elisha, provides for her financially and has never beaten her is lauded as an impressive accomplishment; the court hence cannot "force" the divorce, since domestic abuse was never at play. The basic rights of Viviane Amsalem are discounted time and time again in favor or a wife's "sacred" duties, even in the view of her relatives and female neighbors. Their reasons against divorce are many and are symptomatic of Israeli society: a single female in Israel lacks fruitful options for her future; Elisha is an upstanding and dependable member of society; and so on. In matters of the heart, Israel is vastly different from the Western world, and through the mechanism of divorce, Gett provides a dramatic glimpse into those differences.
Set in the same room and featuring the same characters who argue endlessly about the same situation, Gett could easily become a boring film, but complex balances make it successful. The relationship of Viviane and Elisha, in all its hopelessness and civility, manifests through their character traits as both address them directly with words, and as such, and the film's recursive nature finds great power in its spoken dialogue as well as the lines unspoken and the gestures unexplained.
Ω

Building on his tendency of taking music video creation into his own hands, Dustin Wong has, quite appropriately, collaborated with musical co-conspirator Takako Minekawa on making the "She He See Feel" music video. The track is taken from the duo's latest record on Thrill Jockey, entitled Savage Imagination, and the imagination here is savage, indeed. Chroma-keyed imagery is overlaid upon warped, pulsing backgrounds, heightening the manic video game-inspired nature of the music -- and beneath the bedazzling and head-scratching effects of the videos lies pun-filled lyrical content about "flying over a desert via feeling, consciousness, and physics." No shit. In the Q&A interview below, both musicians speak to collaborating together, the relationship between gender roles and cutesiness in Japanese society, and concepts way more profound than one might expect from the music video.__ JAPANESE TRANSLATION BY MORGAN HARKNESS

"... When we express our feelings with visual things (using emoticons and text to dissect them) instead of spoken words and letters, everything and lots of things become heavier coming out. It's all the same water. Discrimination, wars, gender issues... girlfriends, boyfriends, looking, feeling. A prism collects light, and then diffuses light. We are the same light, and we all shine in different ways." - Takako Minekawa

How did you come to work together on the music video, and how much did you
exchange ideas throughout the process?

Dustin Wong
I've been working on videos whenever I have the chance, especially when I make records. I try to use those as a jumping board to work on a new video. When Takako and I started to collaborate, I thought it would be great to join forces. Our first video was very simple; we tried to make it in an intuitive way as much as possible. We didn't really know what the video is going to be about until we are done with it. We might have had certain ideas, like, "Let's try using a green screen," or, "Let's try to make it look like computer graphics without using computer graphics." We talked about the process once things start forming, in the editing process, and the editing process was very much like the process of painting, additive and intuitive.

Takako Minekawa
The process of making a music video after creating a song is a big project, but it's also a lot of fun. Even when Dustin goes solo, he makes them himself. We want to create an image of our music on our own, with our own ideas and skillset. When Dustin comes up with an idea in his head, we take it from there as a team and make it bigger. (When we are together, we talk about all kinds of things, listen to music, watch videos, and share.) Sharing and cooperation. Instinct and experimentation. I love that time with Dustin.

What similarities and differences are there between the way you collaborate visually and musically?

Dustin Wong
There is a very non-verbal approach with music; we just sit and jam. Since music is sound and talking is sound, playing the music and jamming are already like talking about the music. Once the musical ideas are done, then we can start talking about it. But with visual work, especially videos, it's a much longer process; it's not as immediate as music, so we do have to talk about it a little bit before we begin, a concept of some sort. We don't really have to stick to it; it's just a way to get us going. In music it's all based around improvisation and refining those moments to become songs.

Takako Minekawa
When we first started collaborating, we thought about how each of us could still break out sounds in a way that is free and simple. That's how we completed the set we have now. That is our spaceship. When we make sounds, it's a pure jam conversation. When the song comes together, that's when the meaning and scenery rises to the surface. Filming requires conversation, but in the end, when it's finished and you can see the whole thing, I think the
sound and images resemble one another. Recently, we filmed a scene together in macro, of pouring oil, soda, and paint into a small bowl. That was an improvisational experimental jam. It was very similar to when we make music.

What are the song's themes and lyrical ideas? Do they tie in with the visuals at all?

Dustin Wong
At first Takako was just making "tuu tuu" sounds. During the recording process, we decided that it would be better to add lyrics. I love how she incorporated her ideas onto the song; from the first line of the song, it's implied that we are flying. Flying over a desert via feeling, consciousness, and physics, she uses the phonetic sound Ka N to jump around [through] ideas [with] puns. You can apply different words onto that sound, feeling, organ, to see, etc.

Takako Minekawa
We were really excited when we made this song; it was like a new energy had been born! We didn't have lyrics at first, but one day, when we wanted to put some words together, the phrase "visual physics" came up. Since I was little, I used to think a lot about the particles that exist between air and light. I thought that the origin of the universe -- us and everything that exists, up to quantum physics, things that was thought we can't see -- that all of it exists and can be seen and felt. It makes me feel like when we express our feelings with visual things (using emoticons and text to dissect them) instead of spoken words and letters, everything and lots of things become heavier coming out. It's all the same water. Discrimination, wars, gender issues... girlfriends, boyfriends, looking, feeling. A prism collects light, and then diffuses light. We are the same light, and we all shine in different ways.

Can you tell me a bit about the piece of art on the wooden board? What does that represent, and how was it created?

Dustin Wong
We were actually making this diorama while we were recording. Takako bought a big wooden board from the arts and craft store; we started painting on it, adding aluminum foil paper mache. I think we were trying to create a world. Strange creatures, a Venus of Willendorf, a UFO breast, Easter Island faces... The diorama kind of became the idea for the whole record. By creating a world intuitively together, by combining our imagination without compromise, we made a strange place. The mind is a strange place, sometimes beautiful, volatile and whimsical you know?

Takako Minekawa
One day, we started to draw pictures on a big board we had. As the paint grew in layers, we started to make shapes in clay on top of it, and a strange sort of world took shape. We made little white beings, a well-rounded goddess, and even a UFO breast was born! I think it was in the middle of when we were making the album, but when we made the board, I started to be able to see the world inside the album... including the title SAVAGE
IMAGINATION. I think that board symbolizes the album as a whole.

How long did the music video take to make and what techniques were used? Did you have any particular inspirations when making it?

Dustin Wong
It took about 2 to 3 months to make; my laptop is pretty slow so the rendering was snail speed. We were pretty fascinated by how people were using CG these days; there is this new sense of appreciation for realism or hyperrealism. Still lives are interesting now, now that we have new objects to display like smartphones and cracked screens. We wanted to get that objective distance by using real objects that actually exist. So we took things like rain sticks, plastic figurines of Ganesh, power sockets, foil, anything really! We put them on a turntable with a green screen background, and we looped those objects so it looks like they are spinning constantly. Gifs were a great hint for that too. I think the idea of loops have been utilized more and more in different ways. Ableton uses loops as components; you are dealing with multiple loops, and now we are seeing people use multiple gifs, -- essentially visual loops -- and have them interact with each other. Just contexts over contexts. The language is changing; it's becoming more complex, and at the same time simpler and hieroglyphic, and everyone is becoming literate in cryptic communication.

Takako Minekawa
I think "She He See Feel" took about 2-3 months to complete. We thought, "Why don't we try composing a video using a green screen?" We were initially interested in the effect of using CG, and also why people are enchanted by the simultaneously smooth and rough result of it. That's also really interesting. It's an intuitive and impromptu choice of yours. The light in a prism is very organic, but the CG effects attempt to visually recreate that color and recompose the colors of my face.

Cibo Matto also just released a music video, and though they are stylistically a bit different, your music video has a similar "feel". Japanese music can be accompanied by a lot of different aesthetics, but this type of look and feel certainly recurring in Japanese media, with bright colors and general cutesiness. Why do you think Japanese audiences and artists resonate with this type of look? What draws you to it, in particular?

Dustin Wong
It might have to do with the very defined gender system; men are men and women are women here, on the surface. That surface depth is quite deep here. Like a surface of the screen, depending on the information that perception is receiving, the potential can be close to infinite. Tokyo is a very tight city; you rarely see the horizon, unless you are up on a tall high rise building. When you are looking at a city from 47th floor of a high rise building, the city is flat, as flat as when you are on the ground staring at a wall. But when you look closer, you see [ants] crawling between the bricks, a car driving through an alleyway, the huge video screens blaring out advertisement that you don't want to hear, girls acting Kawaii because they are expected and they can also exploit that behavior for their own advantages... the patriarchal system empowers the men and neuters them at the same time. Japan is a living contradiction: beautiful, painful, trivial and fascinating, through the crevices of these different aspects strange flowers bloom.

Takako Minekawa
Japanese people love cute things, and that sometimes exists in the center of our sensibilities and expression. And I think a lot of time the Japanese people themselves emphasize that cuteness. Because it was made by a Japanese person or because it's from Japan, sometimes my former solo work or our work is called "cute", but cuteness isn't a deliberate part of our artistic conscious. More than that we tend to focus on the "interesting" or "a little weird."

Why do the Japanese people love cute things? Most Japanese people like soft foods. The bread in Japanese bakeries is fluffy in texture, and you see bread for sale described with emphasis around it's fluffiness. Also, we love noodles. For rice too, it's ladled into bowls then formed into a round shape. If you imagine it like that, the shape of Japan's "mascots" will form in front of you. (Hello Kitty and Sanrio is the beginning of it.) I think the cuteness that comes from liking soft foods naturally gets absorbed into the Japanese DNA. Yukimi daifuku (mochi ice cream) is popular with people outside of Japan, but that white, round, sweet form is a symbol of the Japanese. Even in Japan's colorfulness, I feel that sense of whiteness and roundness gets mixed in and remains untouched in it. There might a charm to that, but honestly I think it's a big issue. The concept of feminine women and masculine men is still deep-rooted in this country.

Building on his tendency of taking music video creation into his own hands, Dustin Wong has, quite appropriately, collaborated with musical co-conspirator Takako Minekawa on making the "She He See Feel" music video. The track is taken from the duo's latest record on Thrill Jockey, entitled Savage Imagination, and the imagination here is savage, indeed. Chroma-keyed imagery is overlaid upon warped, pulsing backgrounds, heightening the manic video game-inspired nature of the music -- and beneath the bedazzling and head-scratching effects of the videos lies pun-filled lyrical content about "flying over a desert via feeling, consciousness, and physics." No shit. In the Q&A interview below, both musicians speak to collaborating together, the relationship between gender roles and cutesiness in Japanese society, and concepts way more profound than one might expect from the music video.__ JAPANESE TRANSLATION BY MORGAN HARKNESS

"... When we express our feelings with visual things (using emoticons and text to dissect them) instead of spoken words and letters, everything and lots of things become heavier coming out. It's all the same water. Discrimination, wars, gender issues... girlfriends, boyfriends, looking, feeling. A prism collects light, and then diffuses light. We are the same light, and we all shine in different ways." - Takako Minekawa

How did you come to work together on the music video, and how much did you
exchange ideas throughout the process?

Dustin Wong
I've been working on videos whenever I have the chance, especially when I make records. I try to use those as a jumping board to work on a new video. When Takako and I started to collaborate, I thought it would be great to join forces. Our first video was very simple; we tried to make it in an intuitive way as much as possible. We didn't really know what the video is going to be about until we are done with it. We might have had certain ideas, like, "Let's try using a green screen," or, "Let's try to make it look like computer graphics without using computer graphics." We talked about the process once things start forming, in the editing process, and the editing process was very much like the process of painting, additive and intuitive.

Takako Minekawa
The process of making a music video after creating a song is a big project, but it's also a lot of fun. Even when Dustin goes solo, he makes them himself. We want to create an image of our music on our own, with our own ideas and skillset. When Dustin comes up with an idea in his head, we take it from there as a team and make it bigger. (When we are together, we talk about all kinds of things, listen to music, watch videos, and share.) Sharing and cooperation. Instinct and experimentation. I love that time with Dustin.

What similarities and differences are there between the way you collaborate visually and musically?

Dustin Wong
There is a very non-verbal approach with music; we just sit and jam. Since music is sound and talking is sound, playing the music and jamming are already like talking about the music. Once the musical ideas are done, then we can start talking about it. But with visual work, especially videos, it's a much longer process; it's not as immediate as music, so we do have to talk about it a little bit before we begin, a concept of some sort. We don't really have to stick to it; it's just a way to get us going. In music it's all based around improvisation and refining those moments to become songs.

Takako Minekawa
When we first started collaborating, we thought about how each of us could still break out sounds in a way that is free and simple. That's how we completed the set we have now. That is our spaceship. When we make sounds, it's a pure jam conversation. When the song comes together, that's when the meaning and scenery rises to the surface. Filming requires conversation, but in the end, when it's finished and you can see the whole thing, I think the
sound and images resemble one another. Recently, we filmed a scene together in macro, of pouring oil, soda, and paint into a small bowl. That was an improvisational experimental jam. It was very similar to when we make music.

What are the song's themes and lyrical ideas? Do they tie in with the visuals at all?

Dustin Wong
At first Takako was just making "tuu tuu" sounds. During the recording process, we decided that it would be better to add lyrics. I love how she incorporated her ideas onto the song; from the first line of the song, it's implied that we are flying. Flying over a desert via feeling, consciousness, and physics, she uses the phonetic sound Ka N to jump around [through] ideas [with] puns. You can apply different words onto that sound, feeling, organ, to see, etc.

Takako Minekawa
We were really excited when we made this song; it was like a new energy had been born! We didn't have lyrics at first, but one day, when we wanted to put some words together, the phrase "visual physics" came up. Since I was little, I used to think a lot about the particles that exist between air and light. I thought that the origin of the universe -- us and everything that exists, up to quantum physics, things that was thought we can't see -- that all of it exists and can be seen and felt. It makes me feel like when we express our feelings with visual things (using emoticons and text to dissect them) instead of spoken words and letters, everything and lots of things become heavier coming out. It's all the same water. Discrimination, wars, gender issues... girlfriends, boyfriends, looking, feeling. A prism collects light, and then diffuses light. We are the same light, and we all shine in different ways.

Can you tell me a bit about the piece of art on the wooden board? What does that represent, and how was it created?

Dustin Wong
We were actually making this diorama while we were recording. Takako bought a big wooden board from the arts and craft store; we started painting on it, adding aluminum foil paper mache. I think we were trying to create a world. Strange creatures, a Venus of Willendorf, a UFO breast, Easter Island faces... The diorama kind of became the idea for the whole record. By creating a world intuitively together, by combining our imagination without compromise, we made a strange place. The mind is a strange place, sometimes beautiful, volatile and whimsical you know?

Takako Minekawa
One day, we started to draw pictures on a big board we had. As the paint grew in layers, we started to make shapes in clay on top of it, and a strange sort of world took shape. We made little white beings, a well-rounded goddess, and even a UFO breast was born! I think it was in the middle of when we were making the album, but when we made the board, I started to be able to see the world inside the album... including the title SAVAGE
IMAGINATION. I think that board symbolizes the album as a whole.

How long did the music video take to make and what techniques were used? Did you have any particular inspirations when making it?

Dustin Wong
It took about 2 to 3 months to make; my laptop is pretty slow so the rendering was snail speed. We were pretty fascinated by how people were using CG these days; there is this new sense of appreciation for realism or hyperrealism. Still lives are interesting now, now that we have new objects to display like smartphones and cracked screens. We wanted to get that objective distance by using real objects that actually exist. So we took things like rain sticks, plastic figurines of Ganesh, power sockets, foil, anything really! We put them on a turntable with a green screen background, and we looped those objects so it looks like they are spinning constantly. Gifs were a great hint for that too. I think the idea of loops have been utilized more and more in different ways. Ableton uses loops as components; you are dealing with multiple loops, and now we are seeing people use multiple gifs, -- essentially visual loops -- and have them interact with each other. Just contexts over contexts. The language is changing; it's becoming more complex, and at the same time simpler and hieroglyphic, and everyone is becoming literate in cryptic communication.

Takako Minekawa
I think "She He See Feel" took about 2-3 months to complete. We thought, "Why don't we try composing a video using a green screen?" We were initially interested in the effect of using CG, and also why people are enchanted by the simultaneously smooth and rough result of it. That's also really interesting. It's an intuitive and impromptu choice of yours. The light in a prism is very organic, but the CG effects attempt to visually recreate that color and recompose the colors of my face.

Cibo Matto also just released a music video, and though they are stylistically a bit different, your music video has a similar "feel". Japanese music can be accompanied by a lot of different aesthetics, but this type of look and feel certainly recurring in Japanese media, with bright colors and general cutesiness. Why do you think Japanese audiences and artists resonate with this type of look? What draws you to it, in particular?

Dustin Wong
It might have to do with the very defined gender system; men are men and women are women here, on the surface. That surface depth is quite deep here. Like a surface of the screen, depending on the information that perception is receiving, the potential can be close to infinite. Tokyo is a very tight city; you rarely see the horizon, unless you are up on a tall high rise building. When you are looking at a city from 47th floor of a high rise building, the city is flat, as flat as when you are on the ground staring at a wall. But when you look closer, you see [ants] crawling between the bricks, a car driving through an alleyway, the huge video screens blaring out advertisement that you don't want to hear, girls acting Kawaii because they are expected and they can also exploit that behavior for their own advantages... the patriarchal system empowers the men and neuters them at the same time. Japan is a living contradiction: beautiful, painful, trivial and fascinating, through the crevices of these different aspects strange flowers bloom.

Takako Minekawa
Japanese people love cute things, and that sometimes exists in the center of our sensibilities and expression. And I think a lot of time the Japanese people themselves emphasize that cuteness. Because it was made by a Japanese person or because it's from Japan, sometimes my former solo work or our work is called "cute", but cuteness isn't a deliberate part of our artistic conscious. More than that we tend to focus on the "interesting" or "a little weird."
Why do the Japanese people love cute things? Most Japanese people like soft foods. The bread in Japanese bakeries is fluffy in texture, and you see bread for sale described with emphasis around it's fluffiness. Also, we love noodles. For rice too, it's ladled into bowls then formed into a round shape. If you imagine it like that, the shape of Japan's "mascots" will form in front of you. (Hello Kitty and Sanrio is the beginning of it.) I think the cuteness that comes from liking soft foods naturally gets absorbed into the Japanese DNA. Yukimi daifuku (mochi ice cream) is popular with people outside of Japan, but that white, round, sweet form is a symbol of the Japanese. Even in Japan's colorfulness, I feel that sense of whiteness and roundness gets mixed in and remains untouched in it. There might a charm to that, but honestly I think it's a big issue. The concept of feminine women and masculine men is still deep-rooted in this country.

Kevin Martin has been at the forefront -- and the margins -- of extreme electronic music and bass culture for over two decades. He's worked in genres as diverse as jazzcore, industrial, grime, dub, and dubstep, while staying rooted in the punk/post-punk ethos, making some of the most adventurous and aggressive music across a staggering array of monikers, pseudonyms, and collaborations.With this year's Angels & Devils, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2008's London Zoo, Kevin Martin has resurrected one of his most beloved and influential projects, The Bug. London Zoo employed an arsenal of extreme bass weight, grime-y urban vocals, and abstract sci-fi electronic to reflect the paranoid, claustrophobic world of CCTV London, and the album caught the attention of the wider world at a time when the simulacrum of the internet and social media was really building a head of steam. This brought Kevin Martin's dystopian worldview to a wider audience than ever before, right in the midst of the dubstep explosion. While the rest of the world was busy subverting dubstep's militaristic potential into a formulaic commodity, The Bug sounded fresh, distinctive, weird, warped, and wonderful.

As electronic music has become increasingly codified and quantifiable in the mainstream, this placed Kevin Martin in a precarious position and raised the question: just how would he build the follow-up to London Zoo?

With Angels & Devils, Kevin Martin has decided to make a document of his personal world, and how it reflects the wider global climate.

"For me, the album marks the third part of a triptych. If Pressure, was based around 'Friction', then London Zoo was reporting on 'Incarceration', now Angels & Devils tackles 'Escapism'. I wanted to tackle the bigger picture, above and below," explains Martin. "The more I thought about that comment, the more [Angels & Devils] made sense as a potential album title, as it was a record that hinged on duality, and the points at which opposites collide..."

"And the more I worked on the album's narrative structure, the more the title helped me focus on the contrasts I wanted to explore within this record," he continues.

Heavenly Partnerships

Collaboration has always been hugely influential to Kevin Martin's music, from his work with Justin Broadrick in Techno Animal, to his dub-influenced King Midas Sound. To bring this personal vision of heaven and hell to life, Martin worked with a series of surprising collaborators both new and old. The collaboration that has perhaps raised the most eyebrows is with Grouper's Liz Harris; on "The Void", Harris invokes the celestial vibes of the angel side with her signature ethereal vocals.

"I asked her via email if she would be interested, expecting zero response from her -- fully thinking she would have no idea who I was or would be really NOT into my sound..." Martin says, recollecting his own surprise at the reality of the collaboration. "... but it was beautiful, because she replied within a day, saying she 'had been playing 'Skeng' to her mum in her car the week before' and was totally into the idea of collaborating...."

The collaboration was so successful that Harris can be found again on "Black Wasp", the single for Martin's second release of 2014, which is entitled Exit.

"It was an honour for me to work with someone who I feel is at the very top of their game. She is truly sublime... and I LOVED the fact people were SO stunned we had worked together," Martin enthuses.

Another high profile pairing can be found with now-defunct noise rappers Death Grips, whose shocking approach can be seen as both abrasive and significant.

"I think artistic electro-shock therapy is crucial to jolt us all into new ways of thinking. It's good preparation for the shock of everyday life in all its gloriously chaotic madness... I think Death Grips were/are crucial square pegs, who BURN brightly with life/energy/questions," Martin says of the trio's style and influence. "If everything in life was easy, it would be nullifyingly boring. The cliché of 'No pain, no gain' is based on a truism."

And this truism seems to reflect the polarizing music of The Bug, as well.

"I think we are all techno animals now...I always feel its primitive impulses struggling in a post-modern apocalypse that lead to the greatest art," Martin muses.

Some longstanding collaborators make a repeat appearance on Angels & Devils, including London MC Flowdan, one of the founding members of the Roll Deep crew, and dancehall sorceress Warrior Queen, who has also worked with influential dubstep producer Skream. Both were featured on London Zoo, and Martin has much to reflect upon from years of shared musical evolution.

"Flowdan is only just beginning to peak. He was raw and mic-hungry when I first met him, but now he has become a true artist and is admirably flourishing in his own right outside of any crew or genre," says Martin, who aadmits that he can hardly think of a better MC in the UK at this time. "I'm gobsmacked by just how good he is, and how great he has become... He is killing it lyrically and tonally right now... Truly a vocal Don Dada."

From London Zoo

By contrast, Warrior Queen's track on Angels & Devils is in fact a rehashing of a recording which had been done at Martin's studios years prior, for her solo album which had never been released.

"It had always been one of her very best recordings,as far as I was concerned," says Martin. "She agreed I could put it on my album, and I had to try and outgun Kode 9, who had already wrote a great tune for the original version... it was a tough ask and extremely difficult to match the jaw dropping stun appeal of her vocal performance."

"I'm still not sure if I matched her toe to toe!" he adds.

Shapeshifting Identities

Reggae and dub sound systems are an integral part of Martin's aesthetic - the sonic potential of deadly bassweight, the echoic infinity of the dub chamber. This is less problematic in the UK than in the States -- where racial lines and musical styles blend and meld in all manner of fascinating mutations -- thus leading dubstep, and countless other genres, to become possible in the first place. Kevin Martin is unabashed in his love of the African diaspora, and doesn't feel weird spreading the riddims with pale skin.

"Race separatism seems to be a bigger hang up for Americans, where social life seems more ghettoized than in Europe," muses Martin. "For sure race, racism and prejudice exists blatantly as an issue and reality over here too, but in London, I ended up forming [King Midas Sound] with a Trinidadian and a Japanese girl -- plus many of my best friends were from various ethnic groups. Many people want to see clearly and separately in black and white, as it makes the search for answers simpler, but the world is kaleidoscopic, and I feel very much part of the polyglot, chaotic epicentre."

"For me, it's a question of quality and motive," Martin continues, citing El-P, Eminem, and Adrian Sherwood as artists who would not feel inferior in their craft due to their skin colors. "I didn't set out to fake being Jamaican. I grew up in London surrounded by Jamaican music [and] hip-hop, so it would have been more questionable to try and avoid that exposure."

Nonetheless, Martin has always made it clear that his first introduction to music was through punk and post-punk, and that further influence from other genres is always impacted by that initial framework.

"My inspiration from other areas is always filtered through my own personal roots, trajectory, [and] history, and the astonishing headfuck of those post-punk pioneer's addictive experimentation," Martin explains. "And as a child of John Peel, who was in the middle of jungle, grime and dubstep explosions, it's the dazzling, dizzying friction caused by cultural detonations which I am drawn to most."

This polyculturalism is just one example of how The Bug points the way forward, for both culture in general and in electronic music.

Electronic music is famously forward-looking; anything that sounds vaguely dated or old-fashioned -- outside of whatever the flavor-of-the-moment may be -- is generally ignored out of existence. In that sense, it is vital to note how Martin handled "the albatross of the dubstep label" around the time of London Zoo.

"The urge to reinvent myself is strong, and the big question after London Zoo was, 'Do I want to break away totally from my past, and the albatross of the 'dubstep' label...?' The more I thought about it, the more I realised I had the most respect for artists who had found their individual voice, and then managed to extend their sound thereafter as a craft to be bettered and mastered," says Martin. "I decided to fight my initial kneejerk reaction to destroy the blueprint of London Zoo and the media's misconception of me and that album, and instead, made the decision to try and use London Zoo as a foundation to build outwards from, whilst still acknowledging [its] relationship to [dubstep]."

Martin realized that he had managed to carve out his "own individual voice in electronic music" by elaborating upon the past instead of destroying it completely. He had created an entity which was recognizably identified as The Bug, but he readily admits that "to develop that voice still further was the challenge."

By creating something personal, yet connected to the wider cultural climate -- ensconced in tradition, yet distinctive and progressive, Angels & Devils manages to further develop The Bug as a singular project. Martin is bridging the gap between the tactile world of analog machinery, lavishly layering a wide array of classic synthesizers, while still utilizing the full sonic potential available in a digital environment.

"I love getting lost in the machines and the alchemical magic of FX processing, but emotion and soul fire are far more important in my overall aim. It's essential that I find a concept to explore and continue to use music as a cathartic release -- so therefore, I feel I have no choice in that idea of music as therapy, and I will continue to do so whatever the tools I possess," says Martin, who explains that he is happier with his current studio setup than he has ever been.

"The mixture of analog texture and digital mangling is the key to this record," he explains.

This seems like a way forward, cutting through the line noise. Finding the soul in the machine. Using technology to have a more human experience.

Angels: devils; heaven: hell; analog: digital; personal: cultural.

The Bug is full of contradictions, which likely indicates his music and ideas will remain intriguing and relevant, no matter what trends rise and fall.

Kevin Martin has been at the forefront -- and the margins -- of extreme electronic music and bass culture for over two decades. He's worked in genres as diverse as jazzcore, industrial, grime, dub, and dubstep, while staying rooted in the punk/post-punk ethos, making some of the most adventurous and aggressive music across a staggering array of monikers, pseudonyms, and collaborations.With this year's Angels & Devils, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2008's London Zoo, Kevin Martin has resurrected one of his most beloved and influential projects, The Bug. London Zoo employed an arsenal of extreme bass weight, grime-y urban vocals, and abstract sci-fi electronic to reflect the paranoid, claustrophobic world of CCTV London, and the album caught the attention of the wider world at a time when the simulacrum of the internet and social media was really building a head of steam. This brought Kevin Martin's dystopian worldview to a wider audience than ever before, right in the midst of the dubstep explosion. While the rest of the world was busy subverting dubstep's militaristic potential into a formulaic commodity, The Bug sounded fresh, distinctive, weird, warped, and wonderful.
As electronic music has become increasingly codified and quantifiable in the mainstream, this placed Kevin Martin in a precarious position and raised the question: just how would he build the follow-up to London Zoo?

With Angels & Devils, Kevin Martin has decided to make a document of his personal world, and how it reflects the wider global climate.
"For me, the album marks the third part of a triptych. If Pressure, was based around 'Friction', then London Zoo was reporting on 'Incarceration', now Angels & Devils tackles 'Escapism'. I wanted to tackle the bigger picture, above and below," explains Martin. "The more I thought about that comment, the more [Angels & Devils] made sense as a potential album title, as it was a record that hinged on duality, and the points at which opposites collide..."
"And the more I worked on the album's narrative structure, the more the title helped me focus on the contrasts I wanted to explore within this record," he continues.

Heavenly Partnerships

Collaboration has always been hugely influential to Kevin Martin's music, from his work with Justin Broadrick in Techno Animal, to his dub-influenced King Midas Sound. To bring this personal vision of heaven and hell to life, Martin worked with a series of surprising collaborators both new and old. The collaboration that has perhaps raised the most eyebrows is with Grouper's Liz Harris; on "The Void", Harris invokes the celestial vibes of the angel side with her signature ethereal vocals.
"I asked her via email if she would be interested, expecting zero response from her -- fully thinking she would have no idea who I was or would be really NOT into my sound..." Martin says, recollecting his own surprise at the reality of the collaboration. "... but it was beautiful, because she replied within a day, saying she 'had been playing 'Skeng' to her mum in her car the week before' and was totally into the idea of collaborating...."
The collaboration was so successful that Harris can be found again on "Black Wasp", the single for Martin's second release of 2014, which is entitled Exit.
"It was an honour for me to work with someone who I feel is at the very top of their game. She is truly sublime... and I LOVED the fact people were SO stunned we had worked together," Martin enthuses.
Another high profile pairing can be found with now-defunct noise rappers Death Grips, whose shocking approach can be seen as both abrasive and significant.
"I think artistic electro-shock therapy is crucial to jolt us all into new ways of thinking. It's good preparation for the shock of everyday life in all its gloriously chaotic madness... I think Death Grips were/are crucial square pegs, who BURN brightly with life/energy/questions," Martin says of the trio's style and influence. "If everything in life was easy, it would be nullifyingly boring. The cliché of 'No pain, no gain' is based on a truism."
And this truism seems to reflect the polarizing music of The Bug, as well.
"I think we are all techno animals now...I always feel its primitive impulses struggling in a post-modern apocalypse that lead to the greatest art," Martin muses.
Some longstanding collaborators make a repeat appearance on Angels & Devils, including London MC Flowdan, one of the founding members of the Roll Deep crew, and dancehall sorceress Warrior Queen, who has also worked with influential dubstep producer Skream. Both were featured on London Zoo, and Martin has much to reflect upon from years of shared musical evolution.
"Flowdan is only just beginning to peak. He was raw and mic-hungry when I first met him, but now he has become a true artist and is admirably flourishing in his own right outside of any crew or genre," says Martin, who aadmits that he can hardly think of a better MC in the UK at this time. "I'm gobsmacked by just how good he is, and how great he has become... He is killing it lyrically and tonally right now... Truly a vocal Don Dada."
From London Zoo
By contrast, Warrior Queen's track on Angels & Devils is in fact a rehashing of a recording which had been done at Martin's studios years prior, for her solo album which had never been released.
"It had always been one of her very best recordings,as far as I was concerned," says Martin. "She agreed I could put it on my album, and I had to try and outgun Kode 9, who had already wrote a great tune for the original version... it was a tough ask and extremely difficult to match the jaw dropping stun appeal of her vocal performance."
"I'm still not sure if I matched her toe to toe!" he adds.

Shapeshifting Identities

Reggae and dub sound systems are an integral part of Martin's aesthetic - the sonic potential of deadly bassweight, the echoic infinity of the dub chamber. This is less problematic in the UK than in the States -- where racial lines and musical styles blend and meld in all manner of fascinating mutations -- thus leading dubstep, and countless other genres, to become possible in the first place. Kevin Martin is unabashed in his love of the African diaspora, and doesn't feel weird spreading the riddims with pale skin.
"Race separatism seems to be a bigger hang up for Americans, where social life seems more ghettoized than in Europe," muses Martin. "For sure race, racism and prejudice exists blatantly as an issue and reality over here too, but in London, I ended up forming [King Midas Sound] with a Trinidadian and a Japanese girl -- plus many of my best friends were from various ethnic groups. Many people want to see clearly and separately in black and white, as it makes the search for answers simpler, but the world is kaleidoscopic, and I feel very much part of the polyglot, chaotic epicentre."
"For me, it's a question of quality and motive," Martin continues, citing El-P, Eminem, and Adrian Sherwood as artists who would not feel inferior in their craft due to their skin colors. "I didn't set out to fake being Jamaican. I grew up in London surrounded by Jamaican music [and] hip-hop, so it would have been more questionable to try and avoid that exposure."
Nonetheless, Martin has always made it clear that his first introduction to music was through punk and post-punk, and that further influence from other genres is always impacted by that initial framework.
"My inspiration from other areas is always filtered through my own personal roots, trajectory, [and] history, and the astonishing headfuck of those post-punk pioneer's addictive experimentation," Martin explains. "And as a child of John Peel, who was in the middle of jungle, grime and dubstep explosions, it's the dazzling, dizzying friction caused by cultural detonations which I am drawn to most."
This polyculturalism is just one example of how The Bug points the way forward, for both culture in general and in electronic music.
Electronic music is famously forward-looking; anything that sounds vaguely dated or old-fashioned -- outside of whatever the flavor-of-the-moment may be -- is generally ignored out of existence. In that sense, it is vital to note how Martin handled "the albatross of the dubstep label" around the time of London Zoo.
"The urge to reinvent myself is strong, and the big question after London Zoo was, 'Do I want to break away totally from my past, and the albatross of the 'dubstep' label...?' The more I thought about it, the more I realised I had the most respect for artists who had found their individual voice, and then managed to extend their sound thereafter as a craft to be bettered and mastered," says Martin. "I decided to fight my initial kneejerk reaction to destroy the blueprint of London Zoo and the media's misconception of me and that album, and instead, made the decision to try and use London Zoo as a foundation to build outwards from, whilst still acknowledging [its] relationship to [dubstep]."
Martin realized that he had managed to carve out his "own individual voice in electronic music" by elaborating upon the past instead of destroying it completely. He had created an entity which was recognizably identified as The Bug, but he readily admits that "to develop that voice still further was the challenge."
By creating something personal, yet connected to the wider cultural climate -- ensconced in tradition, yet distinctive and progressive, Angels & Devils manages to further develop The Bug as a singular project. Martin is bridging the gap between the tactile world of analog machinery, lavishly layering a wide array of classic synthesizers, while still utilizing the full sonic potential available in a digital environment.
"I love getting lost in the machines and the alchemical magic of FX processing, but emotion and soul fire are far more important in my overall aim. It's essential that I find a concept to explore and continue to use music as a cathartic release -- so therefore, I feel I have no choice in that idea of music as therapy, and I will continue to do so whatever the tools I possess," says Martin, who explains that he is happier with his current studio setup than he has ever been.
"The mixture of analog texture and digital mangling is the key to this record," he explains.
This seems like a way forward, cutting through the line noise. Finding the soul in the machine. Using technology to have a more human experience.
Angels: devils; heaven: hell; analog: digital; personal: cultural.
The Bug is full of contradictions, which likely indicates his music and ideas will remain intriguing and relevant, no matter what trends rise and fall.
Ω

As the Humans of New York Tumblr has been gracious enough to show the world, the population of New York City is one that is multi-ethnic, socioeconomically diverse, and resilient. Summarizing New Yorkers with blanket statements is difficult, but one thing is for certain: not a night goes by in The City That Never Sleeps that isn't worthy of documentation, exploration, and observation. For the "Time Between" music video, Bear In Heaven enlisted the help of director Nick Bentgen, who spent long nights hanging out with strangers and visiting the homes of acquaintances in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, to collect what must have been hours of observational footage. He then wove together an abstract piece of visual poetry, which plays off of the track's dramatic percussion to create a striking portrait of the beautiful and bizarre nature of New Yorkers. It's a video that just keeps on giving, views after subsequent views.

In this highly informal, laugh-and-compliment-heavy Q&A interview with Bentgen and Bear In Heaven's fashionably late Jon Philpot, both banter about their thoughts on late night New York City, how confounding human nature can be, and what exactly defines a "best pizza". You can see our previous two interviews with Bear In Heaven here.

Bear In Heaven - "Time Between" Music Video

How long did the music video take?

Bentgen: We met up at this place, Best Pizza. Have you been to Brooklyn?

I have, but I have not been to Best Pizza. Is it the best?

Nick Bentgen (Bear In Heaven): It is not the best; I mean, yeah, sure! It's the best. It's the best pizza. I feel like... no comments about the pizza. I mean, it's good pizza! I would just feel bad saying it's the best; I don't want to shortchange any other pizza places. But uh, we met at Best Pizza. It must have been a couple months ago. I guess it was June, and... they sent me this track, and it kind of blew my ears off. It was really good, but it was totally different from anything I've worked on before, so I was like, "Oh man, we could do so much cool stuff with this percussion and the way the track changes so much" -- so maybe this is New York at night, and we just do a portrait of what goes on at night and let's go out and kind of lose control a little bit, like the song does. I guess we were talking about it, and it turns out that because they're in a band, they're way cooler than me, and they know a whole lot of cool people, so they hooked me up with some of their friends. [Guitarist and keyboardist] Adam [Wills] -- a lot of people love him, that's for sure -- and I would e-mail some of his friends, and they would be like, "Oh man, totally! Come over with a camera!" which is kind of not really New York. It's not normal for New York for people to be like, "Yes, will you please come and film me?"... but mostly, it was me and my producer, who I work with a lot, Lisa [Kjerulff], just kind of spending a lot of late nights out in Brooklyn and Queens and Manhattan, just kind of trying to meet people and being like, "Hey, can I take your portrait? Do you want to be in a video?" and then the most magical stuff. But it was like a month. Six weeks. It was like a month.

That seems pretty short considering that the scope of it feels like it took a long time.

Bentgen: Yeah. It definitely did at certain times. There were times when we'd be up until 11, and then nothing was happening, and we'd be like, "Okay, let's go home," but then other nights, it was like, three, four, five, six in the morning, late nights, and those were the times when I was like, "Whoa, we spent a long time on this." But it's cool, because the song has so much energy, and it's a weird energy, and I feel like that reminded me of the weird energy of New York at night.

What's the percentage of strangers to acquaintances or friends?

Bentgen: Okay, so sometimes we would go out, and I would have liked cast my friends. I'd be like, "Luke, we're gonna go to this party, and we're going to ride the subway, and we're going to walk under the [bridge], and that'll be the night," but then midway through, we'd meet a bunch of people, and then I'd be like, "Can I take your portrait?" I'd say, maybe 50% of the people I knew beforehand? Probably less? 25% to 15% were people that I knew, and then other people were total strangers.

What was the reception of the total strangers to being filmed? Was it difficult or easy?

Bentgen: It was funny, because that was kind of a reason to do the video, for me. I'm kind of not really always the most extroverted guy, but I can be, if I have to, so I forced myself to be like, "Hey, can I take your portrait?" or with some of the dancers, it was kind of a, "Can I hang out with you tomorrow night," kind of thing. It was really good. The reception was really good. You wouldn't expect New Yorkers to be that way, I guess, but I've made documentaries in Northern Michigan and a couple videos in Memphis and Arizona, and everybody around there -- if you explain yourself -- everybody is totally receptive, and I was worried in New York that people would be like, "Oh god, here's this guy with a camera," but actually, 90% to 95% of the people were like, "Oh yeah, totally, you can take my portrait or film me for five minutes." I wouldn't always ask beforehand, but.

Do you think it was because you were finding a bunch of late night hooligans?

Bentgen: (Laughs.) Yeah, totally. I think there was definitely that aspect to it, for sure. We talked about making the video, and I was like, "Yeah, we'll start like, next week," and I get home, and Adam had e-mailed me and was like, "Dude, there's this drag show that has been going on for like, two years, and this is the two year anniversary, and you have to go tonight." I was like, "Oh shit!" I've never been to a drag club; it was a drag event that happens every week -- it's actually really cool -- but I'm like, a straight dude from Wisconsin that spends most nights watching Netflix, so I'm like, "Okay, I'll go!" and so I went and kind of e-mailed Adam the next day and was like, "I called your bluff." We were challenging each other, making sure we were touching a lot of the stuff you remember when you walk home at night.

That's the great part about New York. So many things you remember walking home at night.

Bentgen: Yeah. I feel like... in your 20s, you sometimes have a story for your roommate or your friends, where you're like, "I can't believe what I just saw." That's what we were going for.

I read that some of the scenes were recreated from memories. Which were those?

Bentgen: Oh, the guy who...

(At this point, Jon Philpot of Bear In Heaven joins the conference call.)

Philpot: Basically, whatever Nick says is the truth; he was the best guy that ever made a music video. What else did you want to know? He's very smart; he's handsome. And we're not bad, too.

(Queue a long series of questions, answers, and small talk)

Well, let's talk about your video! Though I don't know what to do now, since I already asked Nick a bunch of questions...

Bentgen: We'll pretend I didn't say anything.

Philpot: Well, the truth is, he knows all about it. He was there. He was the one who flipped the script, and he did it. We were just these sort of bystanders that wanted him to do something crazy. He rose to the challenge. He did it.

He did a really good job, definitely. How did you guys come to know each other and collaborate, and how much did you communicate throughout the process?

Philpot: I would say there was a lot of communication from Nick's side -- probably not so much from my side.

Bentgen: Adam's very chatty, and John is not chatty, but just was e-mailing a lot, and I felt like you were the one I really needed to impress, because you talked very little.

Philpot: Adam likes to talk more than I do. But I think I had faith. Let's just say that.

Bentgen: Yeah. It was definitely a collaboration. I feel like -- I had just met you through the label. I had made some videos for JagJaguwar before, and I got recommended through that. But I had met Adam in passing after a Small Black show, I think, and we were both a little too drunk to actually remember. It was like a one night stand with Adam. But then yeah, that was like June that we met up, at Best Pizza. The Best Pizza.

Philpot: Yeah, that's right.

Hey Jon, is it the best pizza?

Philpot: It's really good. It may be the best. I mean, it's not the best pizza; there's a lot of other...

Bentgen: (Laughs.) I said the exact same thing...

Philpot: But it's really good. Did she ask you that exact same question?

Philpot: I mean, technically, it is the best... it's Best Pizza... it's really good, though. I do kind of crave it more often than not, I would say.

Bentgen: It's a good sauce to cheese ratio, and its crust is good, too.

What's the best, because this is what I'm always looking for when I'm going to New York, and I always find myself disappointed, and I'm always most satisfied by the jankiest pizza.

Bentgen: I feel like you have to be really drunk. I feel like the best pizza is when you're like, "Whoa, this is the best pizza." I feel like it's more about you than the pizza place in New York, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I mean... people always say Lombardi's, but I feel like the dive places are better for me.

Philpot: There's a pizza tour you can take here. Yes. And it will take you to some of the borough's finest pizza places. And I think it's relatively inexpensive. I would suggest that if you're into pizza, trying the pizza tour. You won't regret it. You get to eat a lot of pizza.

But I might, because New York has the best food ever. I need it all; I need everything.

Philpot: I know. Tell me about it.

Yeah, you guys are lucky in that regard.

Philpot: There's a lot of temptation. A lot of wallet temptations out there. It's especially bad when you're subscribed to food blog things like I do, and get e-mails about good food.

Bentgen: Are you a foodie, dude?

Philpot: Nahh... I eat food. I eat food.

Bentgen: Yeah, I used to cook, and now I don't cook as much, but I need to. For sure.

Would you say there's a difference going from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Queens in the middle of the night, or would you say it's kind of the same through all the different neighborhoods?

Bentgen: Oh man, I kind of lost my mind on day four or five and couldn't remember where I was all of the time, because I wasn't really sleeping. But Lisa, the producer -- we had a Zipcar, so we weren't really doing the subway thing all of the time, which actually kind of helps you remember which borough you are in... but when we were in Brighton, it was a totally different vibe than like, Harlem. I don't know. We went to so many different places, but they all have their own specific feelings, I feel like. You can tell you're on the Lower East Side -- but some things kind of blend together. It depends.

Philpot: The Brighton one was the scariest part for me.

Bentgen: Were you afraid that we were going to get like...? Those kids were all drinking Poland Spring bottles full of... full of liquid. That wasn't water. They were all fifteen, and it was definitely their show, and they were very kind, but they were definitely showing me what I should film, in a good way. What do I know about Brighton? They were very welcoming and cool.

Which group of kids was that?

Bentgen: I think there's a kid... they're playing football and doing acrobatics on the boardwalk and being very, very argumentative with each other in a lively way. Like they're getting into a fight, especially when the girls showed up. You should have seen the change. It was a bunch of fifteen-year-olds, and when the girls showed up, it was like, oof, the whole vibe changed.

(Philpot cackles.)

Bentgen: There was one guy who was like, "What're we doing dude?" and the other guy was like, "It's the same every night, dude. We're gonna be here on the boardwalk. We're gonna hang out. The girls are gonna come by, and we're gonna drink. That's it."

(Philpot cackles.)

Bentgen: That was a fun time.

Yeah, I was surprised by the number of youth in it; it seemed at least half young kids.

Bentgen: Yeah, man. Those subway guys -- it was crazy... it was kind of crazy what's going on in New York right now. I don't want to get into it, but it's kind of a dicey thing to ask New York people if they like the showtime performers or not, and there's a crackdown from the police about it. But it's a real artform amongst some of the kids that are really good at it. There's some really beautiful stuff, and they were really down to show us.

Bentgen: Yeah, totally. It was very much that way. And we were out on the Bedford L and there was a busker guy who was playing guitar, and then these guys, for the camera, wouldn't stop doing flips, and they were clearly taking all the money away from the guy with the guitar, and I felt bad, so I gave him money. But it was like -- they were definitely one-upping each other for the camera, in a good way.

Jon, did you guys go on any of the nights of shooting?

Philpot: No. I was busy. I had to work, like crazy. Which was a great thing that Nick was able to forge ahead without us, because it was one of those times. I think we've been -- except for one video -- we've been in or been involved in the making of the video, and it's always quite an undertaking, because usually, in that time of making videos, we're juggling work and probably trying to figure out how to play our songs live. That's exactly what we were doing. So, yeah. It was pretty... I was going through a crazy time with my jobby job. But it's over now, so, I can just relax.

What's your jobby job again?

Philpot: I edit.

Bentgen: I was incredibly stressed to find that out. I was like, "I gotta up my game."

No, the editing is fucking ace. The editing is really good; I was actually just thinking that it's one of the things that makes it as good as it is, for sure.

Philpot: Yeah, it's a good edit. It is a good edit.

Bentgen: You guys totally elevated it, too. Whatever, this shouldn't turn into a... but you guys totally elevated the challenge, in a good way. I was like, "I can make it better," in a good way.

This is gonna be the worst interview; it's just going to be you guys complimenting each other the whole time.

Were there any friendships you made from this process? Have you guys let people know about the final product?

Bentgen: People were so excited about it that they were like, "Holy god! It just premiered on the New York Times!" I got a bunch of e-mails back. We film a portrait from somebody, and we get their e-mail address, and we never see them again. But a lot of people were really excited, which was cool.

Philpot: If I was randomly in that video, I'd be really excited.

Has this video -- either making it or viewing it -- changed the way you view New York or the people in it at all?

Bentgen: Everybody's really nice? But I think that's the thing you can say about New York. Everyone thinks there's rude assholes, but they're actually really nice; everybody's really accommodating. That's kind of a lame answer. I feel like I realized that it's going to outlive me. I'm going to get old -- or maybe I already am -- and not be out there. And there are some people that are still out there, every night. It's just kind of crazy that that person's fifty and they're doing this; they're out at 3 in the morning. I could never do that.

Philpot: It made me look at nature in a different way. Human nature. Or humans in nature. Or whatever this nature is that New York is. I guess it's kind of like nature, right? It's our nature.

Yeah. What was the change?

Philpot: Just kind of... for me, it's that shot, Nick, with the kids in front of the excavator. That just trips me out. It says so many things. I look at that, and I'm like, kids in their prom dresses, just totally unaware that there's -- or I'm sure that they were aware that they were standing in front of an excavator, but they're sort of like, "I don't care." So unconcerned that there's a working excavator right there behind them. Excavators working and it's the middle of the night. I don't know. It's just one of those things, where I was like, "Oh man, this is a weird world that we live in."

Bentgen: Yeah, that's one of my favorite shots in the video. Those kids had just finished prom, I think, and they were like, "Oh yeah, we came to Times Square when we finished prom, because that's what you do." And I was like, "Really?" I guess I would have done that in high school, too.

Jon, do you guys have a visual setup traveling with you guys on tour this time?
Working on it.

Bentgen: Oh yeah, you guys have lights?

Are you programming them all yourselves again?

Philpot: Yep. Of course. We're broke musicians. And there's no one... we can't really... we've got help! For sure, we've got help. So we're getting closer to having something figured out to get us into a professional world. We'll be doing all that next week. Figuring it all out. Then we roll.

As the Humans of New York Tumblr has been gracious enough to show the world, the population of New York City is one that is multi-ethnic, socioeconomically diverse, and resilient. Summarizing New Yorkers with blanket statements is difficult, but one thing is for certain: not a night goes by in The City That Never Sleeps that isn't worthy of documentation, exploration, and observation. For the "Time Between" music video, Bear In Heaven enlisted the help of director Nick Bentgen, who spent long nights hanging out with strangers and visiting the homes of acquaintances in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, to collect what must have been hours of observational footage. He then wove together an abstract piece of visual poetry, which plays off of the track's dramatic percussion to create a striking portrait of the beautiful and bizarre nature of New Yorkers. It's a video that just keeps on giving, views after subsequent views.
In this highly informal, laugh-and-compliment-heavy Q&A interview with Bentgen and Bear In Heaven's fashionably late Jon Philpot, both banter about their thoughts on late night New York City, how confounding human nature can be, and what exactly defines a "best pizza". You can see our previous two interviews with Bear In Heaven here.

Bear In Heaven - "Time Between" Music Video

How long did the music video take?Bentgen: We met up at this place, Best Pizza. Have you been to Brooklyn?

I have, but I have not been to Best Pizza. Is it the best?Nick Bentgen (Bear In Heaven): It is not the best; I mean, yeah, sure! It's the best. It's the best pizza. I feel like... no comments about the pizza. I mean, it's good pizza! I would just feel bad saying it's the best; I don't want to shortchange any other pizza places. But uh, we met at Best Pizza. It must have been a couple months ago. I guess it was June, and... they sent me this track, and it kind of blew my ears off. It was really good, but it was totally different from anything I've worked on before, so I was like, "Oh man, we could do so much cool stuff with this percussion and the way the track changes so much" -- so maybe this is New York at night, and we just do a portrait of what goes on at night and let's go out and kind of lose control a little bit, like the song does. I guess we were talking about it, and it turns out that because they're in a band, they're way cooler than me, and they know a whole lot of cool people, so they hooked me up with some of their friends. [Guitarist and keyboardist] Adam [Wills] -- a lot of people love him, that's for sure -- and I would e-mail some of his friends, and they would be like, "Oh man, totally! Come over with a camera!" which is kind of not really New York. It's not normal for New York for people to be like, "Yes, will you please come and film me?"... but mostly, it was me and my producer, who I work with a lot, Lisa [Kjerulff], just kind of spending a lot of late nights out in Brooklyn and Queens and Manhattan, just kind of trying to meet people and being like, "Hey, can I take your portrait? Do you want to be in a video?" and then the most magical stuff. But it was like a month. Six weeks. It was like a month.

That seems pretty short considering that the scope of it feels like it took a long time.Bentgen: Yeah. It definitely did at certain times. There were times when we'd be up until 11, and then nothing was happening, and we'd be like, "Okay, let's go home," but then other nights, it was like, three, four, five, six in the morning, late nights, and those were the times when I was like, "Whoa, we spent a long time on this." But it's cool, because the song has so much energy, and it's a weird energy, and I feel like that reminded me of the weird energy of New York at night.

What's the percentage of strangers to acquaintances or friends?Bentgen: Okay, so sometimes we would go out, and I would have liked cast my friends. I'd be like, "Luke, we're gonna go to this party, and we're going to ride the subway, and we're going to walk under the [bridge], and that'll be the night," but then midway through, we'd meet a bunch of people, and then I'd be like, "Can I take your portrait?" I'd say, maybe 50% of the people I knew beforehand? Probably less? 25% to 15% were people that I knew, and then other people were total strangers.

What was the reception of the total strangers to being filmed? Was it difficult or easy?Bentgen: It was funny, because that was kind of a reason to do the video, for me. I'm kind of not really always the most extroverted guy, but I can be, if I have to, so I forced myself to be like, "Hey, can I take your portrait?" or with some of the dancers, it was kind of a, "Can I hang out with you tomorrow night," kind of thing. It was really good. The reception was really good. You wouldn't expect New Yorkers to be that way, I guess, but I've made documentaries in Northern Michigan and a couple videos in Memphis and Arizona, and everybody around there -- if you explain yourself -- everybody is totally receptive, and I was worried in New York that people would be like, "Oh god, here's this guy with a camera," but actually, 90% to 95% of the people were like, "Oh yeah, totally, you can take my portrait or film me for five minutes." I wouldn't always ask beforehand, but.

Do you think it was because you were finding a bunch of late night hooligans? Bentgen: (Laughs.) Yeah, totally. I think there was definitely that aspect to it, for sure. We talked about making the video, and I was like, "Yeah, we'll start like, next week," and I get home, and Adam had e-mailed me and was like, "Dude, there's this drag show that has been going on for like, two years, and this is the two year anniversary, and you have to go tonight." I was like, "Oh shit!" I've never been to a drag club; it was a drag event that happens every week -- it's actually really cool -- but I'm like, a straight dude from Wisconsin that spends most nights watching Netflix, so I'm like, "Okay, I'll go!" and so I went and kind of e-mailed Adam the next day and was like, "I called your bluff." We were challenging each other, making sure we were touching a lot of the stuff you remember when you walk home at night.

That's the great part about New York. So many things you remember walking home at night.Bentgen: Yeah. I feel like... in your 20s, you sometimes have a story for your roommate or your friends, where you're like, "I can't believe what I just saw." That's what we were going for.
I read that some of the scenes were recreated from memories. Which were those?Bentgen: Oh, the guy who...
(At this point, Jon Philpot of Bear In Heaven joins the conference call.)Jon Philpot (Bear In Heaven): Hi... sorry... I was totally spacing out.
Bentgen: No worries, dude.
Philpot: Basically, whatever Nick says is the truth; he was the best guy that ever made a music video. What else did you want to know? He's very smart; he's handsome. And we're not bad, too.
(Queue a long series of questions, answers, and small talk)

Well, let's talk about your video! Though I don't know what to do now, since I already asked Nick a bunch of questions...Bentgen: We'll pretend I didn't say anything.
Philpot: Well, the truth is, he knows all about it. He was there. He was the one who flipped the script, and he did it. We were just these sort of bystanders that wanted him to do something crazy. He rose to the challenge. He did it.

He did a really good job, definitely. How did you guys come to know each other and collaborate, and how much did you communicate throughout the process?Philpot: I would say there was a lot of communication from Nick's side -- probably not so much from my side.
Bentgen: Adam's very chatty, and John is not chatty, but just was e-mailing a lot, and I felt like you were the one I really needed to impress, because you talked very little.
Philpot: Adam likes to talk more than I do. But I think I had faith. Let's just say that.
Bentgen: Yeah. It was definitely a collaboration. I feel like -- I had just met you through the label. I had made some videos for JagJaguwar before, and I got recommended through that. But I had met Adam in passing after a Small Black show, I think, and we were both a little too drunk to actually remember. It was like a one night stand with Adam. But then yeah, that was like June that we met up, at Best Pizza. The Best Pizza.
Philpot: Yeah, that's right.

Hey Jon, is it the best pizza?Philpot: It's really good. It may be the best. I mean, it's not the best pizza; there's a lot of other...
Bentgen: (Laughs.) I said the exact same thing...
Philpot: But it's really good. Did she ask you that exact same question?
Bentgen: Well, I was like... it is... no, it's not... it is... no, it's not.
Philpot: I mean, technically, it is the best... it's Best Pizza... it's really good, though. I do kind of crave it more often than not, I would say.
Bentgen: It's a good sauce to cheese ratio, and its crust is good, too.

What's the best, because this is what I'm always looking for when I'm going to New York, and I always find myself disappointed, and I'm always most satisfied by the jankiest pizza.Bentgen: I feel like you have to be really drunk. I feel like the best pizza is when you're like, "Whoa, this is the best pizza." I feel like it's more about you than the pizza place in New York, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I mean... people always say Lombardi's, but I feel like the dive places are better for me.
Philpot: There's a pizza tour you can take here. Yes. And it will take you to some of the borough's finest pizza places. And I think it's relatively inexpensive. I would suggest that if you're into pizza, trying the pizza tour. You won't regret it. You get to eat a lot of pizza.

But I might, because New York has the best food ever. I need it all; I need everything.Philpot: I know. Tell me about it.

Yeah, you guys are lucky in that regard.Philpot: There's a lot of temptation. A lot of wallet temptations out there. It's especially bad when you're subscribed to food blog things like I do, and get e-mails about good food.
Bentgen: Are you a foodie, dude?
Philpot: Nahh... I eat food. I eat food.
Bentgen: Yeah, I used to cook, and now I don't cook as much, but I need to. For sure.
Would you say there's a difference going from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Queens in the middle of the night, or would you say it's kind of the same through all the different neighborhoods?Bentgen: Oh man, I kind of lost my mind on day four or five and couldn't remember where I was all of the time, because I wasn't really sleeping. But Lisa, the producer -- we had a Zipcar, so we weren't really doing the subway thing all of the time, which actually kind of helps you remember which borough you are in... but when we were in Brighton, it was a totally different vibe than like, Harlem. I don't know. We went to so many different places, but they all have their own specific feelings, I feel like. You can tell you're on the Lower East Side -- but some things kind of blend together. It depends.
Philpot: The Brighton one was the scariest part for me.
Bentgen: Were you afraid that we were going to get like...? Those kids were all drinking Poland Spring bottles full of... full of liquid. That wasn't water. They were all fifteen, and it was definitely their show, and they were very kind, but they were definitely showing me what I should film, in a good way. What do I know about Brighton? They were very welcoming and cool.

Which group of kids was that?Bentgen: I think there's a kid... they're playing football and doing acrobatics on the boardwalk and being very, very argumentative with each other in a lively way. Like they're getting into a fight, especially when the girls showed up. You should have seen the change. It was a bunch of fifteen-year-olds, and when the girls showed up, it was like, oof, the whole vibe changed.
(Philpot cackles.)
Bentgen: There was one guy who was like, "What're we doing dude?" and the other guy was like, "It's the same every night, dude. We're gonna be here on the boardwalk. We're gonna hang out. The girls are gonna come by, and we're gonna drink. That's it."
(Philpot cackles.)
Bentgen: That was a fun time.

Yeah, I was surprised by the number of youth in it; it seemed at least half young kids.Bentgen: Yeah, man. Those subway guys -- it was crazy... it was kind of crazy what's going on in New York right now. I don't want to get into it, but it's kind of a dicey thing to ask New York people if they like the showtime performers or not, and there's a crackdown from the police about it. But it's a real artform amongst some of the kids that are really good at it. There's some really beautiful stuff, and they were really down to show us.
Philpot: I can totally imagine them being like, "Oh yeah, you wanna videotape this? Oh fuck yeah."
Bentgen: Yeah, totally. It was very much that way. And we were out on the Bedford L and there was a busker guy who was playing guitar, and then these guys, for the camera, wouldn't stop doing flips, and they were clearly taking all the money away from the guy with the guitar, and I felt bad, so I gave him money. But it was like -- they were definitely one-upping each other for the camera, in a good way.

Jon, did you guys go on any of the nights of shooting?Philpot: No. I was busy. I had to work, like crazy. Which was a great thing that Nick was able to forge ahead without us, because it was one of those times. I think we've been -- except for one video -- we've been in or been involved in the making of the video, and it's always quite an undertaking, because usually, in that time of making videos, we're juggling work and probably trying to figure out how to play our songs live. That's exactly what we were doing. So, yeah. It was pretty... I was going through a crazy time with my jobby job. But it's over now, so, I can just relax.

What's your jobby job again?Philpot: I edit.
Bentgen: I was incredibly stressed to find that out. I was like, "I gotta up my game."

No, the editing is fucking ace. The editing is really good; I was actually just thinking that it's one of the things that makes it as good as it is, for sure.Philpot: Yeah, it's a good edit. It is a good edit.
Bentgen: You guys totally elevated it, too. Whatever, this shouldn't turn into a... but you guys totally elevated the challenge, in a good way. I was like, "I can make it better," in a good way.

This is gonna be the worst interview; it's just going to be you guys complimenting each other the whole time.Philpot: Ugh, come on. What else could it be? It turns out... life, you know, we're friends, now... we're new friends... it's good! Like, positive on all fronts!

Were there any friendships you made from this process? Have you guys let people know about the final product?Bentgen: People were so excited about it that they were like, "Holy god! It just premiered on the New York Times!" I got a bunch of e-mails back. We film a portrait from somebody, and we get their e-mail address, and we never see them again. But a lot of people were really excited, which was cool.
Philpot: If I was randomly in that video, I'd be really excited.

Has this video -- either making it or viewing it -- changed the way you view New York or the people in it at all?Bentgen: Everybody's really nice? But I think that's the thing you can say about New York. Everyone thinks there's rude assholes, but they're actually really nice; everybody's really accommodating. That's kind of a lame answer. I feel like I realized that it's going to outlive me. I'm going to get old -- or maybe I already am -- and not be out there. And there are some people that are still out there, every night. It's just kind of crazy that that person's fifty and they're doing this; they're out at 3 in the morning. I could never do that.
Philpot: It made me look at nature in a different way. Human nature. Or humans in nature. Or whatever this nature is that New York is. I guess it's kind of like nature, right? It's our nature.

Yeah. What was the change?Philpot: Just kind of... for me, it's that shot, Nick, with the kids in front of the excavator. That just trips me out. It says so many things. I look at that, and I'm like, kids in their prom dresses, just totally unaware that there's -- or I'm sure that they were aware that they were standing in front of an excavator, but they're sort of like, "I don't care." So unconcerned that there's a working excavator right there behind them. Excavators working and it's the middle of the night. I don't know. It's just one of those things, where I was like, "Oh man, this is a weird world that we live in."
Bentgen: Yeah, that's one of my favorite shots in the video. Those kids had just finished prom, I think, and they were like, "Oh yeah, we came to Times Square when we finished prom, because that's what you do." And I was like, "Really?" I guess I would have done that in high school, too.

Jon, do you guys have a visual setup traveling with you guys on tour this time?
Working on it.
Bentgen: Oh yeah, you guys have lights?

Are you programming them all yourselves again?Philpot: Yep. Of course. We're broke musicians. And there's no one... we can't really... we've got help! For sure, we've got help. So we're getting closer to having something figured out to get us into a professional world. We'll be doing all that next week. Figuring it all out. Then we roll.

Directed by Matt Lambert, Austra's music video for "Habitat" weaves together three tales of human connection into one beautifully-lit cinematic narrative. Set in motel rooms that have been transformed into flowery love chambers, "Habitat" is a departure from Lambert's more sexually-charged works, but maintains a strong focus on casting and persona; with a deliberate eye, it captures the moments of first intimacy between forbidden lovers. Katie Stelmanis of Austra gives us some insight into the band's collaboration with the director.

Austra - "Habitat" Music Video

Director Matt Lambert says this video "explores the fragile and tender moments of anxiety and anticipation that lead up to first intimate contact". How did the concept come about, and how closely did you guys work together?

Basically, we kind of decided we wanted to do this video with Matt, and he was in Berlin and I was in Toronto, and we were kind of putting ideas back and forth and kind of playing with two different ideas...

First, I had the idea of using the word "habitat" and focusing on different habitats or whatever but that kind of didn't really go anywhere, so we decided to really focus on this one line: "I want you, I need you." [It's a] really old song... the lyrics are kind of really secondary to everything else; they're sort of really more -- [like] automatic writing... which is a lot of what my older stuff was like. [I was] singing demos, with words just kind of flowing, so in that sense they don't necessarily make a lot of sense but they definitely create a vibe...

The one focus point of the song was the, "I want you, I need you," so we decided to kind of focus on that line and what was feasible... and Matt was the one who kind of crafted the three storylines.

Can you tell me a bit about the casting process and what the goals were when looking for the people?

Matt totally took control of the casting, and I was actually completely surprised that he managed to find so many great people... but he is a really great director and casting was really important to him, so he took it upon himself. I was attached on emails of friends I hadn't talked to in five years who were helping Matt find these cast members, and I was like, "How did you guys even know each other?" That's how deep he went with it.

"In general I’ve been interested in the normalization and humanization of relationships and identities that are often presented as taboo. I’ve been doing an ongoing documentary project with male escorts in Berlin and most all of my subjects are introspective, intelligent, adjusted and empowered—very few are victims.

I’m also very into shooting characters in their late teens/early 20s or over 60. There’s a unique energy and truth that comes from someone coming of age and ones who are confident enough to 'come again'." - Matthew Lambert, via BlackBook interview

What is the significance of shooting these scenes in motel rooms?

The concept was based on the Japanese style love hotel where you rent it by the hour and you kind of just show up... I suppose it kind of indicates that you're probably somewhere you shouldn't be; the teenagers maybe kind of live with their parents, [or] I don't know exactly what the situation is, but there's definitely a sort of feeling that it's somewhat forbidden or somewhat secret.

I saw some comments where people seemed confused about what was forbidden about the heterosexual couple; how would you respond to that?

I would probably just say that they were too young, basically. That's the thing with love hotels in Japan; for the most part, it's a culture where people live with their parents for a long time, and so a lot of the time, you kind of have to go to a love hotel because that's what they're there for culturally. Kids and young people can go and have fun because it's not really kosher to bring people back home.

I read that Matt was saying he wanted something endearing and honest rather than something overly sexual because he had been doing a lot of sexually-oriented work. How did you feel about this concept?

I feel like a lot of times with our band -- I dunno if it's specifically a female band thing, but -- I feel like people often kind of tend toward this very sexual imagery with our music, and I wanted to get away from that. I wanted to make it very clear to Matt that I don't want it to be with porno.... Especially given the type of director he is; he deals with a lot of very sexual imagery, especially with homosexual themes.

When we were filming it, I was like, "Oh, it might be a porno, I don't know," but after seeing the finished product, I love what he did with it. Initially, he described that the climax was going to be the first intimate contact, but he changed it so that the climax was kind of the aftermath -- the joy of being physically intimate with somebody.

Can you tell me a little bit about Matt's impressive approach to lighting?

Again, that's not really my world, but I just know that he pays attention to every single last detail in creating a certain vibe. All of the hotel rooms didn't look at all what they looked like in the video. The set designers came in and transformed everything from the color of the wallpaper to the bedding to the carpet; everything was sort of tailored specifically for this video and the lighting of this video...

Were there visual differences between the three storylines?

There was supposed to be; I think If you look closely there are, but there's kind of this overarching aesthetic to the video, so there are definitely commonalities... The scene with the older women is kind of more pastels and flowers and then with the young couple, it's going to be more deep reds, sort of bit more intensity. With the older guy and the young man, it's more of a tan brown color palette... so they're not drastically different, but there was definitely an attempt to create different vibes.

Stay tuned for Austra's next music videos, which include one for "Doepfer", directed by Toronto artist Adrian Crossman and one for "Hulluu", directed by Lucy Powers and starring Emily Law.

Directed by Matt Lambert, Austra's music video for "Habitat" weaves together three tales of human connection into one beautifully-lit cinematic narrative. Set in motel rooms that have been transformed into flowery love chambers, "Habitat" is a departure from Lambert's more sexually-charged works, but maintains a strong focus on casting and persona; with a deliberate eye, it captures the moments of first intimacy between forbidden lovers. Katie Stelmanis of Austra gives us some insight into the band's collaboration with the director.

Austra - "Habitat" Music Video

Director Matt Lambert says this video "explores the fragile and tender moments of anxiety and anticipation that lead up to first intimate contact". How did the concept come about, and how closely did you guys work together?
Basically, we kind of decided we wanted to do this video with Matt, and he was in Berlin and I was in Toronto, and we were kind of putting ideas back and forth and kind of playing with two different ideas...
First, I had the idea of using the word "habitat" and focusing on different habitats or whatever but that kind of didn't really go anywhere, so we decided to really focus on this one line: "I want you, I need you." [It's a] really old song... the lyrics are kind of really secondary to everything else; they're sort of really more -- [like] automatic writing... which is a lot of what my older stuff was like. [I was] singing demos, with words just kind of flowing, so in that sense they don't necessarily make a lot of sense but they definitely create a vibe...
The one focus point of the song was the, "I want you, I need you," so we decided to kind of focus on that line and what was feasible... and Matt was the one who kind of crafted the three storylines.

Can you tell me a bit about the casting process and what the goals were when looking for the people?
Matt totally took control of the casting, and I was actually completely surprised that he managed to find so many great people... but he is a really great director and casting was really important to him, so he took it upon himself. I was attached on emails of friends I hadn't talked to in five years who were helping Matt find these cast members, and I was like, "How did you guys even know each other?" That's how deep he went with it.

"In general I’ve been interested in the normalization and humanization of relationships and identities that are often presented as taboo. I’ve been doing an ongoing documentary project with male escorts in Berlin and most all of my subjects are introspective, intelligent, adjusted and empowered—very few are victims.
I’m also very into shooting characters in their late teens/early 20s or over 60. There’s a unique energy and truth that comes from someone coming of age and ones who are confident enough to 'come again'." - Matthew Lambert, via BlackBook interview

What is the significance of shooting these scenes in motel rooms?
The concept was based on the Japanese style love hotel where you rent it by the hour and you kind of just show up... I suppose it kind of indicates that you're probably somewhere you shouldn't be; the teenagers maybe kind of live with their parents, [or] I don't know exactly what the situation is, but there's definitely a sort of feeling that it's somewhat forbidden or somewhat secret.

I saw some comments where people seemed confused about what was forbidden about the heterosexual couple; how would you respond to that?
I would probably just say that they were too young, basically. That's the thing with love hotels in Japan; for the most part, it's a culture where people live with their parents for a long time, and so a lot of the time, you kind of have to go to a love hotel because that's what they're there for culturally. Kids and young people can go and have fun because it's not really kosher to bring people back home.

I read that Matt was saying he wanted something endearing and honest rather than something overly sexual because he had been doing a lot of sexually-oriented work. How did you feel about this concept?
I feel like a lot of times with our band -- I dunno if it's specifically a female band thing, but -- I feel like people often kind of tend toward this very sexual imagery with our music, and I wanted to get away from that. I wanted to make it very clear to Matt that I don't want it to be with porno.... Especially given the type of director he is; he deals with a lot of very sexual imagery, especially with homosexual themes.
When we were filming it, I was like, "Oh, it might be a porno, I don't know," but after seeing the finished product, I love what he did with it. Initially, he described that the climax was going to be the first intimate contact, but he changed it so that the climax was kind of the aftermath -- the joy of being physically intimate with somebody.

Can you tell me a little bit about Matt's impressive approach to lighting?
Again, that's not really my world, but I just know that he pays attention to every single last detail in creating a certain vibe. All of the hotel rooms didn't look at all what they looked like in the video. The set designers came in and transformed everything from the color of the wallpaper to the bedding to the carpet; everything was sort of tailored specifically for this video and the lighting of this video...

Were there visual differences between the three storylines?
There was supposed to be; I think If you look closely there are, but there's kind of this overarching aesthetic to the video, so there are definitely commonalities... The scene with the older women is kind of more pastels and flowers and then with the young couple, it's going to be more deep reds, sort of bit more intensity. With the older guy and the young man, it's more of a tan brown color palette... so they're not drastically different, but there was definitely an attempt to create different vibes.

Stay tuned for Austra's next music videos, which include one for "Doepfer", directed by Toronto artist Adrian Crossman and one for "Hulluu", directed by Lucy Powers and starring Emily Law.